Women in Science for Water

Alice Bouman-Dentener

DiploriA- Sustainable Development Solutions

The Hague, The Netherlands

E-mail: alice.bouman@gmail.com; alice@diploria.org

Affiliations: Vice-President Water Research & Training Centre; Vice-Chair Trade + Impact Association; ISC member Young Water Solutions Fellowship; Honorary Founding President, Women for Water Partnership

---

Royal Academy of Science International Trust

This work was published as a chapter of the book ‘February 11: Women and Girls in Science for Socio-economic Sustainable Development’ (Chapter 13 in: Royal Academy of Science International Trust (February 11, 2020). Uzerler Printing Press, Ankara, Turkey

Please consider purchasing a copy here.

---

Abstract

This chapter looks at the gender discourse through a water lens and at water governance in the context of women’s inclusion in decision-making at all levels. The transformation to gender-sensitive and women-inclusive water governance is a lengthy and on-going process in a sector that is highly fragmented, intrinsically gendered, and traditionally in the technical domain of public administration. The water-gender (SDG5 – SDG6) interface emerges as an important but still underused pathway to further sustainable and equitable development. Next to women’s contributions to water governance in their individual capacities as decision-makers, scientists, water professionals and water users, women’s civil society comes to the fore as an important actor to ensure bespoke solutions that take local gender realities into account. Contemporary research is biased toward women as water users. The role of women in water management has received limited scholarly attention, despite agreement since 1992 by UN Member States that it is a cornerstone for Integrated Water Resources Management. Moreover, research on the gender-water nexus is limited, uncovering the need for increased data mining on this important topic. Those data that are available demonstrate that gender-water research is still very much a woman’s business, as an estimated 88 percent of the authors of relevant research are female.

Keywords: Water, women, gender, IWRM, water governance, intersectionality, science and research

---

1. Introduction

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that was agreed by the United Nations General Assembly in October, 2015 contains two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are foundational to achieving sustainable and equitable development worldwide, and that have a bearing on most, if not all other SDGs: the Gender Goal – SDG 5, which sets out to: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, and the Water Goal – SDG6, which aims to: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” {1].

The 2030 Agenda makes an ambitious commitment to achieve gender equality and leave no one behind. Next to the stand-alone importance of SDG5-targets for gender equality and women’s empowerment, there is considerable added value in the interlinkages with other SDGs. In this regard, the UN global survey on the role of women in development conducted in 2014 reveals that the domain of water and sanitation has a particularly strong potential to transform the lives of women and girls [2]. Inversely, the World Water Development Report 2015 states that: “The principle of equity[1], perhaps more than any technical recommendation, carries with it the promise of a more water-secure world for all” [4]. As both water security and women’s empowerment are of the essence to address the persisting inequalities in society, working on the SDG5-SDG6 nexus can create a triple win for sustainable and equitable development: It unleashes the underused potential of women to contribute to the economy, it strengthens good water stewardship which helps to attain water security for all, and it contributes to building inclusive societies where no one is left behind.

This chapter looks at the gender discourse in relation to water (chapter 2) and at the discourse on water governance in relation to women (chapter 3). Both water and gender are complex topics that have been the subject of extensive deliberations in the international development domain for many decades, resulting in agreements, strategies and policies that determine the collective way forward for the UN Member States. To understand where we stand today, the major transformations in conceptual thinking in both domains are briefly recaptured in these chapters.

Science is indispensable for advancing the SDGs in a strategic and forward-looking manner with due consideration for geopolitical, social and cultural diversities Under Agenda 2030 a United Nations Interagency Task Team on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for the SDGs has been established, complemented by a collaborative STI Multi-stakeholder Forum and an on-line platform[2].

Furthermore, several SDGs include specific STI targets, notably Target 3.b, 4.3, 7.a, 8.2, 9.5 and 9.b, 12.a, 14.a, 17.6 and 17.8 [1]. The gender goal SDG5 and the water goal SDG6 however, do not have a specific reference to the importance of research and science to support these goals. Chapter 4 presents the author’s thoughts on women in science for water.

2. The gender discourse in relation to water

Gender equality has been core concern of the United Nations from its beginning. The UN Charter (1945) has the equal rights of women and men front and center [5], and in 1946 the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was instated as the intergovernmental body to develop agreements, policies and action agendas, and to monitor implementation and evaluate progress on women’s rights and gender equality [6]. After more than 70 years of CSW-work, the United Nations Women’s Decade (1975-1985), four global Women’s Conferences culminating in the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995 [7], the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1979 [8], a multitude of gender strategies, and the dedicated gender goal (MDG3) in the Millennium Development Goals [9], gender equality remains a largely unfinished business[3]. This is no different for the water realm, where women are underrepresented in decision-making at all levels, and where priorities for water allocation continue to reflect the unequal power relations between men and women (see for instance [11 - 14).

Gender equality goes two ways. It is about equal rights and benefits for women and men, but just as much about equal opportunities and responsibilities. In the 1970s the United Nations, instigated by the women’s movement, launched a global process on Women in Development (WID)[4] creating a paradigm shift away from regarding women solely as a vulnerable group and passive beneficiaries of aid. Since then, developments have gone through several stages and transformations: from looking at women almost exclusively in terms of their development needs through recognizing their essential contributions to development processes, to actively seeking women’s socio-economic empowerment and their full participation at all levels of human activity (see for instance [11, 16]). This chapter explores how these developments are reflected in the water realm and how they affect water realities in situations where traditional gender roles prevail.

2.1 Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)

A field with a long-standing focus on women is the drinking water, sanitation and hygiene sector (WASH). A recent multidisciplinary review of gender in WASH [17] concludes that the way in which women’s issues have been conceptualized since the 1970s is not only reflected in, but also shaped by the WASH sector. Women’s experiences, perceptions, and roles in WASH became an important area of focus from the early 1970s because of the potential that access to sufficient and safe drinking water and adequate sanitation has to lift people out of poverty, and the notion that women in particular were lagging behind. This research and advocacy, including on the empowerment potential for women, was primarily carried out by feminist anthropologists and economists leading up to the First UN World Conference on Women in 1975. A scholarly interest in the WASH sector itself is reported from 1984 onwards[5]. This was well into the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD) of 1981 – 1990, which aimed to ensure full access to water supply and sanitation by all inhabitants in the developing countries by the year 1990.

The partial overlap of the IDWSSD with the UN Decade for Women sparked efforts at different levels to reconcile the water and gender agenda. Fueled by the IDWSSD Inter-Agency Task Force on Women (IATFW), a pro-active women’s movement, a core of dedicated scientists and researchers – mostly women – and support programs of UN Agencies, there was a growing realization among policy- and decision-makers that for the unserved part of the population to get access, their women needed to be involved. This led to formal recognition of the role of women in water supply and sanitation by the IDWSSD in 1987 [18]. The IDWSSD evaluation report shows however, that the scholarly and policy focus on women had not yet led to structural implementation in practice. While considerable progress was achieved in service delivery, particularly in urban settings, at the closure of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade, 30 percent of the developing world's population still lacked access to safe water, and 40 percent was left without adequate sanitation, with the majority of the unserved living in rural regions and in low-income, marginal urban areas. The evaluation report mentions that: “Women's involvement in decision making, planning and management, crucial for effective community participation, has been neither systematically encouraged nor applied, but is, at best, pursued on an ad hoc basis” [19]. Furthermore, women as actors in WASH initially implied that women were fitted into the technology-focused development thinking of the 1980s: they were involved as an instrument for cost-effective service delivery at community level rather than empowered to develop themselves (see page 191 [17]).

In the wake of the social development paradigm of the 1990s, the international focus moved from women to gender, which takes into consideration the unequal power relations between men and women and their often-distinct roles in society and associated opportunities for social and economic development. After the 4th World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, gender mainstreaming became the new paradigm and the WASH sector followed suit. Gender mainstreaming is defined as: “The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as men, an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality” [20]. In the new millennium, the mainstreaming of gender issues within WASH programming has become an accepted norm, with conceptual tools and frameworks in place at different levels (see for instance [21 – 24]), including for engineers and technicians [25]. However, there continues to be a considerable gap between commitment to gender equality and implementation through gender mainstreaming in the sector.

Recent research findings show that the integration of gender is hampered by the lack of appropriate approaches, particularly for non-gender experts, who experience difficulties in implementing ‘gender’ concepts into their programmatic work and often lack knowledge of viable entry points, including on how to engage women in genuine dialogue about the gendered impacts of projects [26].

In 2015, the UN Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)[6] reported that at the onset of Agenda 2030, all regions have witnessed increased access to improved sources of drinking water since 1990, but that an estimated 663 million people worldwide still use unimproved drinking water sources, including unprotected wells, springs and surface water. Nearly half of all people using unimproved drinking water sources live in sub-Saharan Africa, while one fifth live in Southern Asia. Sanitation coverage still falls short considerably, with 68% coverage globally and 28% of the world’s population still practicing open defecation, the majority living in rural areas [28].

In a renewed effort to achieve full global coverage, the water goal SDG6 contains specific targets for water and sanitation: Target 6.1 aims to by 2030 ‘achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all’. Target 6.2 is dedicated to sanitation, aiming to ‘achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations’ [1].

With respect to gender sensitivity and women inclusiveness, gender strategies are now the norm. Women are widely seen as key actors and beneficiaries. They continue to be the majority of the unserved, bearing the brunt of gender-based inequalities, including violence, unequal distribution of unpaid work, and lack of voice. Hence, an explicit consideration for and addressing of gender inequality in all global and national efforts to achieve Targets 6.1 and 6.2 of the SDGs is called for [29]. Into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the water, sanitation and hygiene sector continues to be a strong actor in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment, holding the position that WASH serves as a critical pathway to transforming gender relations and supporting women as agents of change. Having a say over and participating in WASH services is an effective empowerment tool. Furthermore, adequate access to WASH has a positive bearing on public health, nutrition and school attendance, improves the situation of women in fragile situations, creates economic opportunities for women, and reduces the burden of unpaid work (see for instance [30]).

Equal Measures 2030 (EM2030), a multi-stakeholder partnership for the advancement of gender equity across the SDGs, has developed gender performance indicators for 14 of the 17 SDGs. The water goal, SDG6, has three gender performance indicators: women’s basic drinking water access, women’s basic sanitation access and women’s satisfaction with water quality. The 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index lists SDG6 as second-best performer on gender equality [31]. This shows that the continuous efforts since the 1970s, aided by scientists and researchers who have documented the need for, the ways towards and the positive outcomes of gender sensitive and women inclusive WASH interventions, are paying off. Progress may seem slow. But one should bear in mind that for water and gender to integrate, a marriage is needed between technical and social disciplines. Furthermore, for internationally agreed principles to translate into national and local realities and practices, considerable awareness raising, mindset change and capacity development must take place. Lastly, the still unserved segments of the global population live in remote areas where centralized services are not an option and traditional gender roles prevail. Bespoke solutions are therefore needed that take the specific physical circumstances and socio-cultural contexts into consideration.

Data collection and research have played an important role in making the case for women’s involvement in WASH. A Web of Science topic search on records from 1977 – 2016, using women and water as combined keywords reveals that water and gender research remains strongly biased towards women as water users, whereas the role of women in water management receives only limited attention (see page 213 [32]).

3. Water Governance and Women

Water is essential in all spheres of life and water security underlies human well-being and sustainable growth. Water is also the primary link through which climate change affects people’s welfare and ecosystems [33]. The pressure on the earth’s water resources is mounting due to continuous population growth and economic expansion, among other factors. This makes sustainable water governance pivotal for achieving the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs. Water security is defined as: “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustainable livelihoods, human wellbeing and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability” [34]. Water security is globally acknowledged as the foundation and the glue for sustainable development, whilst holistic and inclusive water governance and/or  Integrated Water Resources Management are recognized as the way towards achieving water security (see for instance [35 – 39]).

In recognition of the vital importance of water for development and to expeditiously address the pressing water challenges, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has declared 2018 – 2028 as the International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development”. The new Water Action Decade builds on the 2005 – 2015 ‘Water for Life’ Decade [40] and focuses on the sustainable development and integrated management of water resources for the achievement of social, economic and environmental objectives. The Decade resolution highlights the importance of inclusiveness and the full involvement of women as relevant stakeholder group [41].

The growing importance given to water for achieving sustainable and equitable development is also visible in science and research. A recent assessment of water-related research shows that the number of publications supporting SDG6 has increased steadily from 7,070 publications worldwide in 2014 to 9,813 in 2018, whereby the annual compound growth rate of 8.5% is much higher than the average of 2% for all research fields. Furthermore, the bulk of the water-related publications is on water management [42]. In comparison, a 1990s Google Scholar search is reported to record just 47 references on water governance; by 2014, this number had risen to 2,460 references [43][7].

Water governance is a broad concept that reflects the different ways in which the provision, management and safeguarding of water is conceptualized and shaped around the world, ranging from a focus on scarcity or environmental integrity to prioritizing economic efficiency, and from taking a river basin or watershed as organizing principle to applying polycentric or network governance [43]. It is an umbrella term and no agreed definition exists, although there is a common understanding that water governance is a multilevel process and that, while Government holds the prime responsibility, participation in water governance should not be limited to State entities. A much-used definition of water governance is: “The set of rules, practices, and processes (formal and informal) through which decisions for the management of water resources and services are taken and implemented, stakeholders articulate their interest and decision-makers are held accountable” [44].

Water governance is henceforward addressed through the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), as this is the UN approved concept.

3.1 Integrated Water Resources Management

The times of supply-driven, centrally organized and continuously expanding service delivery as the prevailing water governance model are long gone [45]. In the light of the looming water crisis, water experts and policy makers developed a new paradigm to reconcile the increasingly competing demands for domestic, agricultural, industrial, environmental and recreational water uses. The concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was adopted during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (UNCED, 1992) as the agreed way forward towards the sustainable use and equitable allocation of water resources, through the combined effort of state and non-state actors. IWRM is based on the Rio/Dublin Principles that call for a holistic approach to water governance with decentralization to the lowest appropriate level, and that emphasize the importance of stakeholder participation and the central role of women in this regard [46]. Integrated Water Resources Management has since gained worldwide recognition. The ways in which the IWRM principles are put to practice, however, are diverse, ranging from top-down comprehensive planning to bottom-up adaptive management, and from centralized hierarchical decision-making to inclusive water governance. IWRM is not a stage that can be reached, but a dynamic and continuous process of adaptation to changing circumstances; and its implementation is a complex process that depends on the social, economic and environmental conditions in a country and on the political choices in case of conflicting demands [47].

IWRM is presently considered as an essential framework not only to achieve availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all (SDG6), but also underlying the realization of all Sustainable Development Goals. IWRM implementation is included in SDG6 under target 6.5: “By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate” [1]. The global baseline for the degree of IWRM implementation in 172 UN Member States reveals that more than 80% of countries have laid a solid foundation for IWRM, meaning that they report to have policies, laws and IWRM plans and the institutional framework for implementation largely in place at national level. This to a lesser extent also holds true for sub-national and river basin levels, bearing in mind that there are considerable differences between individual countries [48].

3.2 Rio/Dublin Principles 2 and 3: a call for participatory and women-inclusive water governance

Integration is at the core of IWRM. A comparative research on IWRM practice in 13 countries across the globe concludes that IWRM encompasses three types of integration: functional, institutional and societal integration. Functional integration refers to the multi-facetted nature of the resource. It seeks to reconcile the increasingly competing demands on water by the different ways it is used in its course from source to sea. With it comes the need to address the fragmented governance and overlapping jurisdictions between the different systems in a watershed. Institutional integration concerns the effective cooperation between institutions that have water management responsibilities for different sectors and at different levels in a country as well as transboundary. It is about harmonizing laws and policies, and creating coordination mechanisms and other instruments that help authorities to address water governance in a holistic way. Societal integration seeks to overcome the disconnect between a government and the society it serves, and refers to different forms of participatory water governance [47]. As indicated above, Integrated Water Resources Management has four guiding principles that were established at the International Conference on Water and the Environment (ICWE) in Dublin, Ireland, of January 1992 and adopted later that year during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of Agenda 21 (BOX 1). The first Rio/Dublin Principle for IWRM relates to functional integration. The subsequent two principles address societal integration: Principle 2 outlines the need for stakeholder participation, including non-traditional water actors, and Principle 3 is specifically on the pivotal role of women in this regard. As water is traditionally governed through public administration, it should come as no surprise that IWRM generally starts with some form of institutional integration (see for instance [49]).

---

BOX 1: DUBLIN PRINCIPLES FOR INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT [43]

Principle 1 - Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment

Since water sustains life, effective management of water resources demands a holistic approach, linking social and economic development with protection of natural ecosystems. Effective management links land and water uses across the whole of a catchment area or groundwater aquifer.

Principle 2 - Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels

The participatory approach involves raising awareness of the importance of water among policy-makers and the general public. It means that decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level, with full public consultation and involvement of users in the planning and implementation of water projects.

Principle 3 - Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water

This pivotal role of women as providers and users of water and guardians of the living environment has seldom been reflected in institutional arrangements for the development and management of water resources. Acceptance and implementation of this principle requires positive policies to address women’s specific needs and to equip and empower women to participate at all levels in water resources programmes, including decision-making and implementation, in ways defined by them.

Principle 4 - Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good

Within this principle, it is vital to recognize first the basic right of all human beings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an affordable price. Past failure to recognize the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource. Managing water as an economic good is an important way of achieving efficient and equitable use, and of encouraging conservation and protection of water resources.

---

When progress was assessed in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, Johannesburg South Africa), it became clear that 20 years after the adoption of IWRM, fragmental and sectoral approaches in water management persisted. This has prompted UN Member States to call for the development of IWRM and water efficiency plans by 2005 as part of the Johannesburg Platform of Implementation [50]. Countries across the globe have since increasingly addressed their prevailing water challenges under the flag of IWRM, with significant efforts to co-ordinate water policy across ministries and between levels of government, but not necessarily with matching degrees of stakeholder involvement in the process [51].

Reviews from different regions of the world, where IWRM is implemented under varying geopolitical, environmental, cultural and climatological circumstances, show that the conditions to advance on Dublin Principles 2 and 3 are often not in place [52 – 54]: Strategic vision and political commitment that are indispensable to making participatory water governance a reality are often lacking, while reforming institutional structures towards more participatory water governance requires a simultaneous ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach with strong leadership and long-term commitment at all administrative levels. Furthermore, the complexity and lengthy process of partnership-building, in particular with respect to community involvement and the inclusion of women, youth, minorities and vulnerable groups, is easily underestimated. Cultural norms and customary law present compounding factors for women’s inclusion in decision-making. Investment in an enabling environment for the different state and non-state actors to engage in effective governance at the appropriate levels is key to successful stakeholder participation. Important elements are cultural and gender sensitivity and conducting meetings in a neutral and trusted environment. Stakeholder processes come at a cost, both financially and in-kind; sufficient means, financially and otherwise, need to be deployed.

3.3 Women’s Agency for IWRM

There is a clear distinction between gender-sensitive and women-inclusive water governance. Women and men have a different physique and often occupy different roles in society, including their reproductive roles. Consequently, water allocation schemes and other management measures, water pollution and other health hazards, or climate change and water-related disasters may affect women and men differently. Gender-sensitive water management takes those gendered differences into account. IWRM on the other hand, is about the way in which water resources are allocated, used and managed, which should be women-inclusive.

Women’s participation in the provision, management and safeguarding of water takes many forms. An important distinction to make is between women as individuals of the female sex, and the involvement of women’s civil society. The term civil society organizations (CSOs) refers to the wide array of nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in public life and express the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations. This definition of civil society marks a deliberate shift away from use of the term nongovernmental organization (NGO), which refers more narrowly to professional, intermediary and non-profit organizations that advocate and/or provide services in the areas of economic and social development, human rights, welfare, and emergency relief. Civil Society Organizations include trade unions, community-based organizations, social movements, faith-based institutions, charitable organizations, universities, foundations, and professional associations [55].

Women’s civil society, however diverse, always has the female gender as an organizing principle. Many organizations are social networks unifying women of the same professional, ethnic or cultural background, or with the same interest, religious or political affiliation; others bridge between women across distinct peer groups and segments in society and/or across national boundaries. Women’s civil society practices horizontal and vertical integration which makes them an asset for IWRM. The social capital represented by women’s organizations is a substantial resource for collective action at all levels, contributing to social cohesion, democracy, economic development and sustainability of interventions {56].

The central role of women in the provision, management and safeguarding of water is anchored in Dublin Principle 3 as a corner stone of Integrated Water Resources Management. While the importance of involving women in the management of water and sanitation was already recognized at the 1977 United Nations Water Conference at Mar del Plata [57] – which is generally seen as the starting point of IWRM – it has long been ignored in the mainstream IWRM discourse. A global turning point was the second World Water Forum (2000, The Hague), where women rose to the challenge and shaped the water and gender discussion that was included as a topic for the first time [58]. Women’s voices were included in the World Water Vision for the 21st Century [59] and two complementary global networks emerged: the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA) and the Women for Water Partnership (WfWP). GWA is dedicated to mainstreaming gender in water resources management and the membership includes individuals, both female and male, as well as organizations [60]. WfWP on the other hand, is a global women’s civil society network based on Dublin Principle 3 uniting women leadership from around 130 predominantly low and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA region) and Western Europe. It presents a collective women-for-water voice in international fora, and supports and capacitates its diverse member organisations to partake in decision-making and to take action on the  implementation of gender-sensitive and women-inclusive water governance in their respective communities and countries [61].

The International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005 – 2015 included a specific goal to: “ensure the participation and involvement of women in water-related development efforts” [62]. It has been a catalyst for women’s inclusion in decision-making on water at all levels and has sparked many projects and programmes. In the course of the Water for Life Decade, the major themes of integrated water resources management have been addressed in a dedicated UN Water Day and Year [63]. Women’s civil society has consistently been included in the deliberations at the annual Zaragoza conference to shape the year theme, and has also co-organized the Women’s Fora of all High-Level Dushanbe conferences for the Decade (see for instance page 12 [64]). Throughout the Water for Life Decade a great many different initiatives have been documented, at which women’s civil society engagement in water projects and programmes across the globe has provided the much-needed link between the global frameworks and the grassroots level. Their involvement has produced sustainable and cost-effective outcomes through building local ownership and correctly addressing community needs, as well as using indigenous knowledge to prevent expensive mistakes. Involving women in project implementation makes them more likely to reach intended beneficiaries [65, 66].

The Royal Academy of Science International Trust (RASIT) co-organized the first Women Water Forum of the new Water for Sustainable Development Action Decade in Dushanbe in 2018. ‘Bridging Voices to Actions’ incorporaed the theme of Women in Science for Water and ensured that the multi-stakeholder debates were informed by contemporary scientific knowledge. The focus was on SDG Target 5.5, i.e.: “Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life”, which bears a strong resemblance to Dublin Principle 3 (see BOX 1). The Forum called for problem-oriented and transdisciplinary research which connects academic, public and private spaces. Stakeholder engagement was considered crucial to ensuring that science-based plans address the real-world problems and change policies and behaviors alike. Participants concluded that he intersectionality of gender is still poorly understood, and women are often looked at as a homogenous group. An important observation was that women scientist are underrepresented in the water and development domain. Their leadership was considered essential to achieving SDG6 timely and sustainably, and to adequately addressing the gender dimension of water-related challenges [67].

A closer look at the gender indicators in the global baseline for IWRM implementation reveals that gender objectives are lagging in the IWRM implementation processes of most countries, and more so at the local and transboundary levels. Subnational laws, policies or plans, for instance, include gender objectives in 44 per cent of countries, but with limited or no funding for implementation. Gender objectives are not explicitly addressed in 23 per cent of countries, and a considerable number of nations mention that gender objectives are not applicable [48]. This indicates that the gap between internationally agreed principles and the actual situation in a country is still considerable and that the entities and individuals responsible for water are not necessarily aware of the social and gender implications of their work.

Science can contribute to bridging that gap, e.g. by further explaining and highlighting the intersectionality of gender [68], as well as by developing system-thinking approaches to address the local gender realities in a structured way. A study from Peru demonstrate the added value of incorporating the wisdom of traditional water governance approaches into the modern engineering water profession [69].

3.4 Gender diversity in the workplace

Individual women can be politicians, managers, scientists, water professionals, farmers, teachers or housewives. However, they belong to different social strata and will generally follow the predominant paradigm of their peer group. They may or may not experience discrimination in their work environment, and they themselves may or may not be gender-sensitive. In the water sector, women water professionals are a minority and their career opportunities are often limited.  A recent survey of 64 water utilities in 28 low- and middle-income countries shows that less 20 percent of water workers are women. In technical and managerial positions on average only 23 percent are women. Some of these water utilities have no women in technical and managerial positions at all. Key barriers and bottlenecks that women face in their career in the water sector include biased recruiting processes, legal constraints, insufficient flexibility in arrangements that enable women to reconcile work, as well as domestic roles and unequal opportunities for career advancement [70].

As was also highlighted during the Women Water Forum ‘Briding Voices to Actions’, gender parity among water professionals and in leadership does not guarantee gender-sensitive water management, as this requires a good understanding of gender roles in daily life, i.e. outside water agencies, in communities and across the different geopolitical zones of the country. There are however many benefits to gender diversity in the workplace including better governance and financial performance, improved communication relations and customer satisfaction and increased sustainability and complicance ( BOX 1.1 [70]).

4. Women in Science for Water

Much has happened since the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, which united 17,000 participants and 189 UN Member States for the purpose of furthering gender equality and women’s empowerment and ensuring women’s equal participation in all spheres of life. The Beijing Platform for Action states in article 69 that: “Investing in formal and non-formal education and training for girls and women, with its exceptionally high social and economic return, has proved to be one of the best means of achieving sustainable development and economic growth that is both sustained and sustainable.” Moreover, article 75 notes that “Science curricula in particular are gender-biased and do not relate to women’s and girls’ daily experience and fail to give recognition to women scientists” [7].

Globally, a mere 28.8% of persons employed in Research & Development (R&D) are women, with Central Asia (48.1%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (45.5%) almost reaching gender parity, whilst in South and West Asia only 18.5% of researchers are female. [71]. These findings are supported by a detailed analysis in 2019 of research performane through a gender lens. The study compares gender research in 12 OECD countries and regions for two 5-year periods, i.e. 1996 – 2000 and 2011 – 2015, revealing that overall the proporion of women researchers has increased, and on average, there is gender parity. Divided per research field, there tend to be larger proportions of women researchers than men the Health and Life Sciences, whereas in the field of Physical Science, men outnumber women. Moreover, women tend to have lower scholarly outputs than their male colleagues, although the author’s gender does not significantly influence download and citation rates [72].

There appear to be no data available on the proportion of women researchers in the water science field. A recent study on higer education in the water sector contains some sex-disaggregated data on higher education, mostly drawn from UNESCO Institue for Statistics [73].  It shows that overall, the gender gap in tertiary education is closing. More women than men complete tertiary education in 80% of the countries with available data. Women are more likely to graduate from five fields of tertiary education, namely Education, Humanity and Arts, Social Sciences, Business and Law, and Health and Welfare. Men are the majority in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and in Agriculture, and more so in the fields of Engineering and Manufacturing and Construction.

There is no sufficiently detailed global data source on educational activities in the water sector. Similar to water, hydrology, too, permeates a great many scientific disciplines ranging from biology, chemistry and earth sciences to law, political science, public health and sociology, to name just a few. Moreover, there are a multitude of pathways through which a qualification as a water expert can be obtained, making it virtually impossible to get an overview of the proportion of female and male scientists and students.

To shed some light on the proportion of female and male authors, the author has searched two online databases (i.e. Springer-Link, and Taylor & Francis) for publications since 2000 that contain references to both water and gender/women in their title. Publications with either water or gender in the title have been included if the other term was among the abstract keywords. This search, complemented with research published in the Water Alternatives Journal and the author’s personal literature database, resulted in 140 publications on various water- and gender-related topics. In 134 of the 140 publications it was possible to identify the gender of the author(s). The (co)authors appeared to be predominantly women (82%), whilst 88% of research had a female first author[8].

The abovementioned study on research performance through a gender lens [72], looks also at the scope of gender research activity. With respect to the water-gender interface, the study reveals interesting findings: Chapter 3 includes a map of gender research categories, for both aforementioned 5-year periods.[9] To be included on that map, a term must have appeared in at least 40 research papers. The bigger the dot, the more publications with the term have been found. In the map charting 1996 – 2000, the theme ‘Water’ appears as a small, isolated dot, meaning that research on water and gender was only a marginal category in the years directly following the adoption of the Dublin Principles for IWRM and the Beijing Platform for Action. Moreover, between 2011 and 2015, a period in which gender research increased significantly, research on water and gender combined was even more negligible. Furthermore, a previously mentioned study on the proportional appearance of different water themes supporting SDG6 research  does not feature gender as a theme either [42].

Overall, very little data are available on research on the gender-water nexus, thus demonstrating the need for increased data mining on this important topic. But those data that are available clearly demonstrate that gender-water research is still very much a woman’s business.

5. Conclusions

As both water security and women’s empowerment are of the essence to address the persisting inequalities in society, working on the SDG5-SDG6 nexus can create a triple win for sustainable and equitable development by increasing women’s contributions to the economy, strengthening good water stewardship in support of water security for all, and contributing to inclusive societies where no one is left behind.

Unfortuantely, the gender goal SDG5 and the water goal SDG6 do not specifically reference the importance of research and science to support these goals. Data and research on the water-gender interface are particularly scarce and scattered, and there is an urgent need for increased data mining on this important topic. There can be no green growth without the sustainable use and management of water resources. Water permeates various SDGs and cuts across many sectors and disciplines. Hence it is important to generate cross-sectoral interests and cooperation for the sustainable use and management of this vital resource. We must provide interdisciplinary research that is tailor-made for the specifc geopolitical and environmental circumstance and includes the social and gender dimensions of water governance. What women are contributing to these research fields, and in particular to the water and gender nexus, is an interesting and partly unanswered question.

The UN Memher States have agreed on IWRM as the framework not only to achieve availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all (SDG6), but also underlying the realization of all Sustainable Development Goals. The global baseline for the degree of IWRM implementation in 172 UN Member States reveals that institutional integration (laws, policies, IWRM plans and institutional coordination) are well under way, especially at at national level. Digging into the gender objectives reveals a less rosy picture. Dublin Principle 3 is lagging in most countries, in particular at the sub-national and transboundary levels. The historical reviews in the WASH and IWRM domains demonstrate that reconciling the water and gender agendas is a complicated and lengthy process that requires a marriage between technical and social disciplines, as well as bespoke pathways to translate internationally agreed principles into national and local realities and practices.

The transformation to gender-sensitive and women-inclusive water governance is a lengthy and ongoing process in a sector that is highly fragmented, intrinsically gendered, and traditionally in the technical domain of public administration. The contribution of interdisciplinary teams involving social and technical scientists and researchers is indispensable to guiding this process and providing independent knowledge for awareness raising, mindset change and capacity development.

The central role of women in IWRM is achhored in Dublin Principle 3. Women’s participation in the provision, management and safeguarding of water takes many forms. An important distinction to make is between women as individuals of the female sex, and the involvement of women’s civil society. Women’s civil society, however diverse, always has the female gender as an organizing principle, unifying women of the same profession, ethnicity background or interest, harnessing their social capital and cutting across segments in society and geogapical boundaries. This makes women’s civil society a crucial and still underused asset for IWRM.

---

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to Jordi Bouman for his critical reading of the manuscript and his valuable advice. The support of Iris Caris, Utrecht University, in the search for water and gender publications is highly appreciated.

Conflict of Interest

The author certifies that her analysis of the subject matter and presentation of materials discussed in this manuscript is not a reflection of any personal or financial interest.

---

End notes

[1] Gender equity and equality are not synonyms. While gender equality refers to the status of enjoying equal rights, opportunities, rewards and access to resources, gender equity is the process to get there: creating a level playing field and ensuring women’s empowerment [3]

[2] See article 70 of A/RES/70/1 [1]

[3] See also UNSG Gutierrez’ message on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2018 [10]

[4] "WID", a term originating in the 1970s, is understood to mean the integration of women into global processes of economic, political and social growth and change [15].

[5] Indicator used is the proportion of WECD conference paper titles containing gender related keyword; WECD being the annual International Conference of the Water, Engineering and Development Centre, uniting academics and practitioners in WASH (see page 189 [16]).

[6] The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene was established in 1990 in response to the need for a structural monitoring on drinking-water and sanitation coverage. It is now part of the UN Water Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG6 [27].

[7] The terms water management and governance are sometimes used interchangeably, while being perceived as different concepts by others. The figures should therefore not be compared as absolutes, but be considered as showing a trend.

[8] The data can be obtained from the author at alice@diploria.org

[9] i.e. 1996 – 2000 and 2011 – 2015

References

[1] UN Transforming our world: The agenda for sustainable development, A/RES/70/1. 2015 Available from: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E

[2] UN Women. The World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations; 2014. Available from:

https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2014/world-survey-on-the-role-of-women-in-development-2014-en.pdf?la=en&vs=3045

[3] UNFPA. FAQ about gender equality. Available from: https://www.unfpa.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-gender-equality  [Accessed: 1 Nov 2019]

[4] WWAP (United Nations World Water Assessment Programme). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015: Water for a Sustainable World. Paris, UNESCO; 2015. Available from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231823

[5] Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice. San Francisco, 1945. Available from: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf

[6] Commission on the Status of Women. Available from:  https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/brief-history [Accessed: 19 Oct 2019]

[7] UN. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action: Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, 4-15 September 1995. New York: Dept. of Public Information, United Nations; 1995. Available from: https://www.un.org/en/events/pastevents/pdfs/Beijing_Declaration_and_Platform_for_Action.pdf

[8] UN. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. New York, 18 December 1979. 1979. Available from: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cedaw.aspx

[9] The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Available from: https://www.mdgmonitor.org/millennium-development-goals/

[10] UN Women. The UN Secretary-General’s Message on International Women’s Day. 2018. Available from: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/3/statement-un-sg-iwd [Accessed: 19 Oct 2019]

[11] Bouman-Dentener, AM. Water Seekers, Carriers and Keepers: The Global and Gender Divide. In: Devlaeminck D., Adeel Z, Sandford R, editors. The Human Face of Water Security. Water Security in a New World. Cham: Springer; 2017. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50161-1_7

[12] Grant M. Gender Equality and Inclusion in Water Resources Management. GWP Action Piece., 2017. Available from: https://www.gwp.org/globalassets/global/about-gwp/publications/gender/gender-action-piece.pdf

[13] WWAP (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2019: Leaving No One Behind. Paris, UNESCO.; 2019. Available from: https://en.unesco.org/themes/water-security/wwap/wwdr/2019#download

[14] Schuster-Wallace CJ, Cave K, Bouman-Dentener A, Holle F. Women, WaSH, and the Water for Life Decade. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and the Women for Water Partnership, 2015. Available from: https://inweh.unu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Women-Wash-and-Water-for-Life-Decade-UNU-INWEH.pdf

[15] Rathgeber  EM. WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in research and practice. International Development Research Centre Ottawa.; 1989. Available from:

https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625/5225/34345.pdf?sequence=1

[16] Allély D, Drevet-Dabbous O, Etienne J, Francis J, Morel à l'Huissier A, Chappé P, Verdelhan Cayre G. Water, gender and sustainable development: Lessons learnt from French co-operation in sub-Saharan Africa. Etudes et travaux 23. 2002. Available from: http://www.pseau.org/outils/biblio/resume.php?docu_document_id=41

[17] Fisher J, Cavill S, Reed, B. Mainstreaming gender in the WASH sector: dilution or distillation? Gender & Development. 2017; 25 (2). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1331541

[18] International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. Steering Committee for Cooperative Action, Elmendorf, Mary & World Health Organization. Community Water Supply and Sanitation Unit. The IDWSSD and women's involvement. prepared for the World Health Organization by Mary Elmendorf. World Health Organization. 1990. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/62150

[19] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Monitoring Report 1990. 1990. Available from: https://washdata.org/sites/default/files/documents/reports/2017-06/JMP-1992-Report.pdf

[20] UN Women. Gender mainstreaming. Available from:

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/17274/593340WP0WSP1g10Box358367B01PUBLIC1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y [Accessed 27 Oct 2019]

[21] World Bank. Mainstreaming Gender in Water and Sanitation. Water and sanitation program working paper. Washington, DC: World Bank.; 2010. Available from:

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/17274/593340WP0WSP1g10Box358367B01PUBLIC1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

[22] African Ministers Council On Water. AMCOW Policy and Strategy for Mainstreaming Gender in the Water Sector in Africa. 2011. Available from:

https://www.amcow-online.org/images/Resources/24%20June%20AMCOW%20Eng.pdf

[23] Asian Development Bank. Toolkit on gender equality results and indicators. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development Bank; 2013. Available from: https://www.oecd.org/derec/adb/tool-kit-gender-equality-results-indicators.pdf

[24] Ministry of Water Resources, Women's Affairs Department, in collaboration with Ethiopian Water Resources Training Center and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). (Gender Mainstreaming Field Manual for Water Supply and Sanitation Projects. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 2005. Available from: https://genderinsite.net/sites/default/files/Gender%20Mainstreaming%20Field%20Manual%20English.pdf

[25] Reed B, Coates S, Fry M, Parry-Jones S, Smout, I. Infrastructure for All: Meeting the needs of both men and women in development projects. A practical guide for engineers, technicians and project managers, Loughborough: WEDC, Loughborough University. 2007. Available from:

https://genderinsite.net/sites/default/files/Gender%20Mainstreaming%20Field%20Manual%20English.pdf

[26] Willets J, Halcrow G, Carrard, N, Rowland C, Crawford J. Addressing two critical MDGs together: gender in water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives. Pacific Economic Bulletin, 2010:  25 (1). Available from:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/156642751.pdf

[27] UN Water Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG 6. Available from:

https://www.unwater.org/publication_categories/integrated-monitoring/ [Accessed: 1 Nov 2019]

[28] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP). (2015). 25 Years Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment. Available from: https://washdata.org/reports?reports%5B0%5D=date%3A2015&reports%5B1%5D=language%3Aenglish

[29] Grant M, Huggett,C. Willetts J. Gender and SDG 6: the Critical Connection – A Framing Paper for the High-Level Panel on Water. Australian Water Partnership. 2016. Available from: https://waterpartnership.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/HLPW-Gender-SDG6.pdf

[30] Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: A Pathway to Realizing Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls. Position Paper, Canadian WASH Sector. Available from: https://www.wateraid.org/ca/10-reasons-wash-is-a-pathway-to-gender-empowerment-and-the-empowerment-of-women-and-girls

[31] Equal Measures 2030. Harnessing the Power of Data for Gender Equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index. 2019.  Available from:
https://data.em2030.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/EM2030_2019_Global_Report_English_WEB.pdf

[32] de Silva L, Veilleux JC, Neal MJ. The Role of Women in Transboundary Water Dispute Resolution. In: Fröhlich C, Gioli G, Cremades R, Myrttinen H, editors. Water Security Across the Gender Divide. Springer; 2018. pp. 211 – 228. Available from: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-64046-4

[33] de Albuquerque, C, Bouman-Dentener, AM, Maestu J. (Water Security: furthering peaceful co-existence of people and societies. In: Moita L, Pinto, LV, editors. Espaços económicos e espaços de segurança. Lisboa: UA L; OBSERVARE; 2017. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11144/3037

[34] UN-Water. Water Security & the Global Water Agenda. UN-Water Analytical Brief. Geneva: UN-Water; 2013. Available from: http://www.unwater.org/downloads/watersecurity_analyticalbrief.pdf

[35] Adeel Z. Water Security as the Centerpiece of the Sustainable Development Agenda. In: Devlaeminck D, Adeel Z, Sandford R, editors. The Human Face of Water Security. Water Security in a New World. CHAM: Springer; 2017. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50161-1_7

[36] Sadoff CW, Hall J, Grey, D, Aerts, JCJH, Ait-Kadi M, Brown C, Cox A, Dadson S, Garrick D, Kelman J, McCornick P,  Ringler C, Rosegrant M, Whittington D, Wiberg D. Securing Water, Sustaining Growth: Report of the GWP/OECD Task Force on Water Security and Sustainable Growth. UK: University of Oxford; 2015. 180p. Available from: https://www.water.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/SCHOOL-OF-GEOGRAPHY-SECURING-WATER-SUSTAINING-GROWTH-DOWNLOADABLE.pdf

[37] The OECD Water Governance Initiative. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/cfe/regional-policy/water-governance-initiative.htm [Accessed: 22 Oct 2019]

[38] GWP. Available from: https://www.gwp.org/en/About/who/What-is-the-network/ [Accessed: 22 Oct 2019]

[39] Smith M, Clausen TJ. Revitalising IWRM for the 2030 Agenda. World Water Council Challenge Paper. 2018. Available from: https://www.worldwatercouncil.org/en/publications/revitalizing-iwrm-2030-agenda

[40] UN. International Decade for Action 'Water for Life' 2005-2015. Available from: https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/

[41] UN. International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018–2028, A/RES/71/222. Available from: https://undocs.org/A/RES/71/222

[42] RELX. RELX issues graphic on SDG6-supporting research. 2019. Available from: https://sdgresources.relx.com/articles-features/relx-issues-graphic-sdg-6-supporting-research

[43] Woodhouse P, Muller M. Water Governance—An Historical Perspective on Current Debates. World Development 92(C). 2017, pp. 225-241. DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.014. Available from:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.014

[44] OECD. The OECD Water Governance Indicator Framework. 2018. Available from: https://www.oecd.org/regional/OECD-Water-Governance-Indicator-Framework.pdf

[45] Gleick PH. The Changing Water Paradigm: A look at Twenty-first Century Water resources Development. Water International. 2000;  25 (1), pp. 127-138. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245327826_The_Changing_Water_Paradigm_-_A_Look_at_Twenty-First_Century_Water_Resources_Development

[46] The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development. 1992. Available from: https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/hwrp/documents/english/icwedece.html

[47] Lubell M, Edelenbos J. Integrated Water Resources Management: A Comparative Laboratory for Water Governance. In: Journal of Water Governance, 2013. 03/04-2013. Special Issue on Integrated Water Resources Management. International Baltzer Science Publishers. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260043808

[48] UN Environment. Progress on integrated water resources management. Global baseline for SDG 6 Indicator 6.5.1: degree of IWRM implementation. 2018. Available from:

https://www.unwater.org/publications/progress-on-integrated-water-resources-management-651/

[49] OECD. Water governance in OECD countries: A multi-level approach. OECD studies on water. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2011. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264119284-en

[50] UN Water. Available from: https://www.unwater.org/publications/status-report-integrated-water-resource-management-water-efficiency-plans-csd-16/ [Accessed: 1 Nov 2019]

[51] UNEP. The UN-Water Status Report on the Application of Integrated Approaches to Water Resources Management.  2012. Available from: https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/pdf/un_water_status_report_2012.pdf

[52] Global Water Partnership. Integrated Water Resources Management in the Caribbean: The Challenges facing Small Island Developing States. 2014. Available from:

https://www.gwp.org/en/learn/KNOWLEDGE_RESOURCES/Knowledge_search/?SortByDate=False&query=&region=-1&topic=129&publication=120&lng=en&year=-1

[53] Global Water Partnership.. Integrated Water Resources Management in Central and Eastern Europe: IWRM versus EU Water Framework Directive. GWP Technical Focus Paper. 2015. Available from: https://www.gwp.org/en/learn/KNOWLEDGE_RESOURCES/Knowledge_search/?SortByDate=False&query=&region=-1&topic=129&publication=120&lng=en&year=-1

[54] Global Water Partnership. Integrated water resources management in Eastern Africa: Coping with ‘complex’ hydrology. GWP Technical Focus Paper. 2015. Available from:

https://www.gwp.org/en/learn/KNOWLEDGE_RESOURCES/Knowledge_search/?SortByDate=False&query=&region=-1&topic=129&publication=120&lng=en&year=-1

[55] World Bank. Consultations with Civil Society: A Sourcebook. 2007. Available from:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/CSO/Resources/

[56] Bouman-Dentener, AM. Women’s agency in water governance: Lessons from the water and health nexus in Armenia and Ukraine. In: Sustentabilidade em Debate 8 93. 2017. pp. 64-74. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322349638_Women's_agency_in_water_governance_Lessons_from_the_water_and_health_nexus_in_Armenia_and_Ukraine

[57} UN. Report of the United Nations Water Conference. Mar del Plata, 14 – 25 March, 1977. E/Conf.70/29. 1977. Available from: https://www.ircwash.org/sites/default/files/71UN77-161.6.pdf

[58] WWF2. Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century. 2000. Available from: http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/fileadmin/world_water_council/documents/world_water_forum_2/The_Hague_Declaration.pdf

[59] Cosgrove WJ, Rijsberman FR, for the World Water Council. Making Water Everybody’s Business: World Water Vision for the 21st Century. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd; 2000. Available from: https://www.worldwatercouncil.org/fileadmin/wwc/Library/WWVision/TableOfContents.pdf

[60] Gender & Water Alliance. Available from: http://genderandwater.org/en/about-the-gender-and-water-alliance [Accessed: 2 Nov 2019]

[61] Women for Water Partnership. Available from: https://www.womenforwater.org/who-we-are.html [Accessed: 2 Nov 2019]

[62] UN. International Decade for Action, “Water for Life”, 2005-2015. A/RES/58/217. 2004. Available from: https://undocs.org/A/RES/58/217

[63] UNDESA. International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005 – 2015. Available from: https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/

[64] UN International Year of Water Cooperation. The High Level International Conference on Water Cooperation: Outcome Document. Dushanbe, Tajikistan. 2013. Available from:

https://www.womenforwater.org/uploads/7/7/5/1/77516286/dushanbe_gender_forum_outcome_documents_eng.pdf

[65]. Maestu Unturbe, J. A 10 Year Story: The Water for Life Decade 2005 – 2015 and Beyond. UNWDPAC. 2015. Available from: https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/pdf/WaterforLifeENG.pdf

[66] Bouman-Dentener AM. Women as Agents of Change in Water: Reflections on Experiences from the Field. 2015. Available from:

https://www.academia.edu/13095587/Women_as_Agents_of_Change_in_Water_reflections_on_experiences_from_the_field

[67] Royal Academy of Science International Trust & UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. UN Water Action Decade Women Water Forum: Bridging Voices to Actions. Synthesis Report. 2018. Available from:: https://womeninscienceday.org/files/Women_Water_Report_Final.pdf

[68] Fletcher AJ. More than Women and Men: A Framework for Gender and Intersectionality Research on  Environmental Crisis and Conflict. In: Fröhlich C, Gioli G, Cremades R, Myrttinen H, editors. Water Security Across the Gender Divide. Cham: Springer; 2019. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64046-4

[69] Vera Delgado JR,  Zwarteveen M. Queering Engineers? Using History to Re-think the Associations Between Masculinity and Irrigation Engineering in Peru. Engineering Studies. 2017;  9 (2). pp. 140-160. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1361427

[70] World Bank. Women in Water Utilities : Breaking Barriers. World Bank, Washington, DC: World Bank; 2019. Available from: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32319

[71] UNESCO Institute for Statistics -UIS. Women in Science. Factsheet FS/2018/SCI/51. 2018. Available from: http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs51-women-in-science-2018-en.pdf

[72] Elsevier. Gender in the Global Research Landscape: Analysis of research performance through a gender lens across 20 years, 12 geographies, and 27 subject areas.  2019. Available from: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/resource-library/ty/gender-in-the-global-research-landscape

[73] Mayfield C.  Higher Education in the Water Sector: A Global Overview. UNU-INWEH Report Series, Issue 07. Canada: United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Hamilton; 2019. Available from: http://inweh.unu.edu/publications/

---

Women’s Agency in Water Governance: lessons from the Water and Health Nexus in Armenia and Ukraine

By: Alice M. Bouman‐ Dentener

Biologist/Ethologist from Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Honorary Founding President of the Women for Water Partnership,
Vice-President of the Water Research and Training Centre of Myanmar (WRTC), Chair of the Members Council of the European Water Stewardship (EWS).

Source: Sustentabilidade em Debate - Brasília, v. 8, n.3, p. 64-74, dez/2017

Introduction

Water availability is critical in shaping the lives of individuals and societies. The way in which water resources are managed has evolved over time, moving away from top-down technical service provision towards holistic and more participatory approaches to address shared water challenges in a community, country or watershed. Since it was embraced by the United Nations in 1992 Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has developed into the prominent global concept for water governance.

IWRM describes the what: an interdisciplinary approach cutting across levels, sectors and strata in society and giving due consideration to people and to the environment. However, the governance system through which IWRM is delivered can be organized quite differently according to geo-political, socio-economic and environmental circumstance; and it may include various degrees of stakeholder participation (e.g. OECD, 2011; Woodhouse & Muller, 2017).

Gender refers to the socio-culturally and politico-economically constructed roles, expectations, and responsibilities ascribed to men and women, girls, boys and persons with other gender identities, which change overtime, are context- and history-specific, and are inseparable from power relations and societal value systems (Myrttinen et al., 2018). Many scholars and practitioners have pointed out that the use of, access to and control over resources are intrinsically gendered (e.g. UN DESA, 2010; UN Women, 2014; Bordia Das, 2017; Sultana, 2018). Water and gender research is reported to be biased towards women as water users; the role of women as water managers has received far less attention (de Silva et al. 2018).

There is ample documentation in the water and development domain on how the lack of sufficient and safe water and adequate sanitation hits the poor and vulnerable segments of society hardest. Disparities in access to water and sanitation are rural/urban and wealth-related and coverage is much lower for minorities and other disadvantaged groups. While gender disaggregated data in the water sector are limited, it is generally noted that the larger burden still falls on women and girls, who are the traditional water seekers and carriers in rural and poor areas of the developing world while being largely excluded from decision-making and water management processes that concern them (e.g. United Nations, 2014; Bouman-Dentener, 2016).

In water and development policy and practice, women have often been addressed as a homogeneous and vulnerable group whose access to basic water and sanitation services is compromised hampering their possibilities to lead productive lives. The intersectionality of gender inequality is now increasingly recognised, meaning that disparities between genders are looked at in relation to social class, ethnicity, age, cultural setting etc...  The complexity of gender relations points to the need for tailor-made approaches when incorporating gender in water provision and management processes (e.g. Grant et al., 2017; Fletcher, in press).

Gender roles and Women’s participation

Social differences between women and men may lead to gendered roles that can vary substantially between countries, cultures, ethnicities and generations. Such gender-related differences may result in different consequences of policies and programs for women and men, influencing their possibilities, potential, and outlook to lead productive lives. Distinctive gender roles also determine the options for women to participate in public life and therefore their potential contributions to society (GWP, 2014).

The agreed Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs (United Nations, 2015) address many of the structural causes of gender inequality, including issues such as elimination of discrimination, violence, and harmful practices against women, recognizing and reducing unpaid care work, promoting access to and control over assets and property, and reversing unequal participation in private and public decision-making, as well as achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations. A recent global survey on the role of women in development confirms that domestic water and safe sanitation is a domain with a particular strong potential to transform the lives of women and girls (UN Women, 2014).

In societies where women and girls are the traditional water seekers and carriers, their influence in decision-making on water is generally limited (e.g. Kevany and Huisingh, 2013; Bouman-Dentener, 2015). The positive results of involving women in the design and planning stages of water initiatives are increasingly coming to the fore. As an illustrative example, UNICEF (2010) points to an evaluation of 122 water projects, stating that the effectiveness of a project was six to seven times higher where women were involved than where they were not. Involving women in water decision-making also addresses overall questions of gender equality in the process.

The Human Rights Based Approach to Water Governance

Sustainable use and management of water resources is largely about people; it requires a good understanding of the social context in which a water management system needs to function. The human rights-based approach (RBA), which underlies UN development policies and programs, takes this social dimension into account. RBA places people at the center of the development process. In doing so, it addresses social inequalities as root causes for the lack of access to water.

The rights-based approach establishes the obligations of States to ensure that basic water needs are met, but equally empowers people to claim their rights and fulfil their obligations as valuable members of society (Filmer Wilson, 2005). RBA is implicit in the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and was further strengthened through the recognition of safe water and sanitation as a human right by the United Nations General Assembly in 2010. Other IWRM areas such as water quality, managing water scarcity and risks, and transboundary waters are governed by the principles of equitable and reasonable use and the “no harm” principle as stated in the UN Water Courses Convention or the ECE Water Convention respectively.

UN Resolution AS/RES/64/292 – proclaiming access to clean water and adequate sanitation as a human right – calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, capacity building and technology transfer to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all. It has an explicit focus on the most disadvantaged and marginalized, and it emphasizes participation, empowerment, accountability and transparency.

‘Realizing the human rights to water and sanitation: a handbook’ developed by UN Special Rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque provides guidance for State actors to create an enabling environment for the implementation of these human rights, with due consideration given to the roles of non-state actors, and stating the importance of participatory and inclusive processes. The handbook states to that effect: “The human right to water and sanitation can only be realized effectively through full, free and meaningful participation in decision-making processes by people affected by those decisions. Participation ensures better implementation and enhances the effectiveness and sustainability of interventions, offering the possibility of social transformation. Participation must be an integral part of any policy, programme or strategy concerning water or sanitation” (OHCHR, 2014).

The central role of women in the provision, management and safeguarding of water has long been acknowledged by the international water and development community. It is anchored in the Dublin Principles that were agreed during the International Conference on Water and Environment (ICWE) in Dublin, Ireland in 1992 (United Nations, 1992), have been integrated in the water programs of UNCED Agenda 21 and are the corner stones of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) ever since. Evidence shows that meaningful involvement of women in water resources development, management, and use can lead to effective solutions to water problems, helping governments avoid poor investments and expensive mistakes, making projects more sustainable, and ensuring that infrastructure development yields maximum social, economic, and environmental results and furthers sustainable development goals (GWP, 2015). Notwithstanding the long-time acknowledgement of the importance of women in this sector, the potential contributions of women to water development remain largely untapped to date (WfWP, 2013).

The Protocol on Water and Health to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Water Convention

Access to clean drinking water is taken for granted by many people living in Europe. Yet in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region alone, an estimated 120 million people, i.e. one person in seven, do not have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. In 1999 the Protocol on Water and Health was adopted by the parties UNECE Water Convention (UNECE WC) to ensure universal access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for all citizens of the pan-European region. The main aim of the Protocol is to protect human health and wellbeing through good water management, including the protection of water ecosystems, and by preventing, controlling and reducing water-related diseases. The Protocol is the first international agreement of its kind, adopted specifically to attain an adequate supply of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for everyone, and effectively protect drinking water sources.

The Protocol on Water and Health provides a framework for the translation of the human right to water and sanitation into practice. The Protocol specifically commits its Parties to promoting equitable access to water and sanitation, and setting specific targets and target dates. Each country that adopted the Protocol has the obligation to provide access to water and sanitation for all its citizens. Moreover, UNECE WC adopted a Gender Action Plan for 2012-2013 to implement the UNECE policy for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

WfWP member organizations Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment in Armenia, Earth Forever in Bulgaria and MAMA-86 in Ukraine have taken a leading role in organizing civil society contributions to the development and implementation of the Protocol on Water and Health in their respective countries.

Women’s Civil Society Contributions from Armenia (AWHHE)

After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia experienced a period of transition to a market-driven economy. Over the past decades significant political, economic and institutional reforms have gradually taken place in the country. One of the major areas undergoing change is the water and health sector. While Armenia has sufficient water resources to provide the total population with safe drinking water, insufficient investment and the collapse of water supply systems have resulted in inadequate and often unsanitary water supplies. Seventy-five to 85% of water is lost on its way from source to consumers because of pipe deterioration and other reasons. Over the last decade the government of Armenia has taken important steps to improve access, reliability and quality of drinking water and its infrastructure. The water resource balance in many parts of the country has improved and water supply in certain areas has progressed. However, in most parts of Armenia the institutional framework for water supply delivery remains poor. In addition, the sanitation sector had been neglected, particularly in rural areas.

Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment (AWHHE) was established in 1999 as a non-governmental women’s organisation of health professionals and environmentalists. The mission of AWHHE is to promote the human right to live in a healthy environment and to address environmental pollution. Key activities include raising public awareness about environmental pollutants, conducting independent monitoring investigations on water supply management, and promotion of the Water and Health Protocol. In recent years, water and sanitation have become the main focus of the organization. Since 1999 AWHHE has implemented more than 90 projects for the promotion of sustainable sanitation and improvement of water supply.

To effectively address the water and sanitation challenges in rural Armenia, AWHHE practices gender-inclusive community involvement and strengthens women’s participation in decision-making. After Armenia signed the Protocol on Water and Health in 1999, AWHHE became a key actor in the implementation of the Protocol. As a national NGO, AWHHE functions as a liaison between the government and civil society and represents the voice of civil society to ensure that policies give due consideration to the gender dimensions of water and health. AWHHE influences policy and monitors State projects to ensure better alignment with the reality on the ground and to safeguard that the local population benefits from investments and interventions. At the same time AWHHE implements projects on service delivery that yield immediate results. An important part of the work of AWHHE is to strengthen local actors, in particular women, to become active contributors to safe water and adequate sanitation in their communities.

In 2007 the Ministry of Territorial Administration asked AWHHE to draft a Financing Strategy for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation in Armenia. Minimum water supply and sanitation standards were agreed upon by the stakeholders, and this involvement elevated AWHHE’s profile and strengthened its capacity as a policy advocate. AWHHE played a significant role in the target setting process under the Protocol on Water and Health to the UNECE WC in Armenia. Through public consultation processes in 3 regions and drawing upon its expertise in water and sanitation management, AWHHE supported the government in developing draft targets appropriate for national and local needs. The process of developing targets, target dates and measures to comply with the requirements of the Protocol is on-going.

AWHHE works with a variety of partners: On the international level AWHHE actively participates in the processes of implementation of the Children Environmental Health Action Plan for Europe (CEHAPE) as well as the Protocol on Water and Health. At national level, AWHHE participates in multi-stakeholder settings, such as the National Council on Sustainable Development, facilitated by the Prime Minister, and the Steering Committee of the National Policy Dialogue on water-related issues facilitated by the Ministry of Nature Protection. By raising awareness and building capacity of local actors, AWHHE builds partnerships for sustainable management and scaling up.

Together with partners, AWHHE has implemented more than 25 water and sanitation projects across Armenia, primarily in schools. AWHHE has conducted awareness raising interventions among more than 2000 pupils, staff and parents about environmental health risks and social injustice related to environmental pollution. The water and sanitation pilot projects implemented in 15 rural communities benefit around 20,000 people.

The school water and sanitation projects had a snowball effect on the improvement of the overall water supply in surrounding villages. Tens of individual households installed ecosan toilets, resulting in improved hygienic conditions. In pursuit of the social and economic development of rural communities, AWHHE has carried out combined water and agricultural projects throughout Armenia. Local women increased their incomes thanks to the construction of solar dryers for drying fruits and vegetable, greenhouses for cultivating seedlings, implementation of small grant programs on beekeeping, rabbit breeding, and purchasing of hens for egg production. Successful activities were scaled up at the local level and showcased in agricultural fairs.

A major achievement of AWHHE was the inclusion of women in the national dialogue on the Protocol on Water and Health. AWHHE has a consistent focus on women’s groups in all its activities, with the aim of increasing the role of both rural and urban women in decision-making processes at local and national levels. To this end, AWHHE has organised seminars, workshops and trainings to enhance women’s awareness and help them to discover their abilities to be active participants in civil society. AWHHE projects developed women’s leadership skills, resulting in their increased involvement in community problem resolution through cooperation.

AWHHE’s multi-level activities bring with them a number of challenges. First, it takes time and effort to build the necessary relationships and trust with the government and the population in the absence of a tradition of government - civil society cooperation at local, district or national levels. Second, the success and sustainability of projects depends on the acceptance and participation of the local population. Small- scale projects that are adapted to local circumstances and take into account cultural differences have proven to be more successful than large-scale projects. The scaling-up and replication of small-scale, tailor-made projects in decentralized settings is labor intensive and requires social and cultural sensitivity as well as adequate funds.  The lack of sufficient financial resources remains a constant battle for AWHHE.

omen’s Civil Society Contributions from Ukraine (MAMA-86)

Ukraine is considered a “country in transition”. Following the Soviet era and independence in 1991, the country suffered a devastating economic blow and the majority of the people live in various gradations of poverty. It was estimated in 2010 that approximately 24% of the population in Ukraine lives below the poverty line. Access to safe drinking water is one of the largest environmental health problems in the country, both in urban and rural areas. About 75% of the population is supplied by surface water, most of which is not fit for drinking unless treated. In addition, water tariffs are rising rapidly. The government is seeking to reform the water sector, and ratified the Protocol on Water and Health in 2003 to address these issues and improve the nation’s health.

MAMA-86, Ukraine, is the foremost environmental, women’s and social justice organization in the country and was established as a national environmental network in 1990 by mothers worried about Chernobyl effects on environment and health. It now has 17 branches in the different regions of Ukraine. MAMA-86 promotes eco-democracy, greening policy and practice, equal access to WASH, IWRM and river basin principles implementation, chemical safety, independent research, and public monitoring and lobbying. MAMA-86 works on strengthening the role of women in education and in the decision- making processes for improving the living standards of the citizens.

MAMA-86 has been a driving force behind the drafting and subsequent implementation of the Water and Health Protocol since 1998. Having built a strong network throughout the country, it is well positioned to raise public awareness and to develop and lead participatory processes related to different water and sustainable development themes. MAMA-86 also builds capacity for WASH implementation by conducting pilot projects in local communities and training women leaders to move towards self-reliance.

The organization has successfully lobbied and worked with the Ukraine government and supported the formulation of a legislative framework on water and health issues specific to the Ukraine context. Several laws, such as the National Environment and Health Action Plan (2001), the Law on Drinking water (2002), the program on “Drinking Water of Ukraine” (2005), and the national targets for the Protocol on Water and Health (2011), were initiated by MAMA-86 and drafted with strong public participation, informed by MAMA-86’s expertise on water and environmental management. In this capacity MAMA- 86 has conducted national policy dialogues and stakeholders’ consultations on integrated water resources management under climate change and coordinated the GWP Ukraine contribution to the Integrated Drought Management Program of GWP CEE and WMO.

In addition to its awareness raising and capacity building activities, MAMA-86 is one of the major organizations implementing the Protocol in Ukraine and in the region. The network conducts independent research on drinking water quality and supply, and implements affordable and effective technical solutions to improve access to safe water and sanitation for households, communities, schools and hospitals. Since 1999 MAMA-86 has contributed directly to improvement of access to safe water and sanitation for over 40,000 people in urban and rural areas by implementing more than 50 pilots in 12 regions of Ukraine. They work with national and local authorities to ensure equal access to WASH for vulnerable groups: school children, patients in healthcare institutions, pregnant women and mothers with babies.

They have initiated and coordinated numerous public consultations, raising awareness and building capacity of the population with a focus on women’s involvement in water and health management issues. Over the past 10 years MAMA-86 meetings reached approximately 250,000 people and its media campaigns reached an estimated 4,000,000. In April 2005, for instance, they organized the Earth Day concert in Kyiv involving approximately 200,000 people. In addition, they have actively engaged women’s organizations in various regional and European policy development initiatives on water and health.

Since 1997 MAMA-86 has grown from 1 drinking water project in 5 locations (Kyiv and 4 local branches) to a network in 13 regions with over 90 pilot projects in urban and rural areas of Ukraine, all based on local ownership and women leadership. These pilots have resulted in the replacement and/ or rehabilitation of 3 water supply and 2 sanitation infrastructures, installation of 16 water purification systems for schools, boarding schools, kindergartens, sanatorium and maternity hospitals, and construction of ecosan toilets and 9 small wastewater treatment systems for 5 schools and 91 households in different parts of Ukraine.

Cooperation with the government at different levels has proven to be difficult at times due to constant administrative reforms in the country, lack of political will, and the low capacity of decision-makers to comply with Protocol obligations. Gaining the trust of authorities and CSOs and local communities alike is an on-going process. Local capacities are often low, and informing and convincing communities on health, sanitation and water practices requires substantial effort and resources. Scaling up successful pilot projects is a challenge; it also requires significant effort and resources to engage local actors and communities, and to build ownership and a legal framework for sustainable use and management. Financial and human resources are scarce, which limits MAMA-86’s activities.

Participatory Water Governance: the role of Women’s Civil Society

Women’s Civil Society is a component of the diverse and multi-faceted conglomerate of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). The term civil society organizations (CSOs) refers to the wide array of nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in public life and express the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations. This definition of civil society marks a deliberate shift away from use of the term nongovernmental organization (NGO), which refers more narrowly to professional, intermediary and non-profit organizations that advocate and/or provide services in the areas of economic and social development, human rights, welfare, and emergency relief (World Bank, 2005). Civil Society Organisations include trade unions, community-based organizations, social movements, faith-based institutions, charitable organizations, universities, foundations, professional associations, and others.

Women’s civil society has the female gender as organising principle and is quite diverse in itself. Many are social networks bonding women of the same professional, ethnic or cultural background, or with the same interest, religious or political affiliation; others bridge between women across different peer groups and segments in society or across national boundaries. The social capital represented by women’s organizations can be a substantial resource for collective action at all levels, contributing to social cohesion, democracy, economic development and sustainability of interventions (Bouman-Dentener & Devos, 2015).

The examples of AWHHE and Mama-86 illustrate how women’s civil society may contribute to water governance at different levels:

• Operating at community level to influence both community members and local authorities, and effectively bridge the gap between citizens and their governments. The examples of Armenia and Ukraine demonstrate how women-led projects raise awareness, can build community involvement and ensure that interventions reach the intended beneficiaries. They are prime examples of an integrated approach and include institutional arrangements for maintenance and management that fit the local circumstances, and that are endorsed by the community.

• Creating vertical integration, from community to national levels and vice-versa. Women’s social networks are often multi-level enable them to work on different levels simultaneously. Deeply rooted socially, they have a potential to bridge levels and sectors, while practicing an integrated, people-centered approach. MAMA-86, for instance, has created a country-wide network working on water and environment related issues and partnering with State and non-State actors at community, regional and national levels.

• Providing the evidence base for informed decision-making. Besides raising awareness and building capacity of the population, and of women in particular, AWHHE and Mama-86 have conducted independent research on water quality and implementation conditions. They have proactively brought the outcomes of research and community interventions into the national legislative adaptation process and implementation plans for the Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.

In summary, the multi-layered women’s civil society network structure can be a useful instrument for horizontal and vertical integration, bridging between different segments and layers in society. By uniting women citizens from different social strata and sectors, the Women’s Major Group provides a platform to raise awareness, discuss different opinions and opposing interests, and forge partnerships that jointly address a common problem. Moreover, women’s organizations, when empowered and enabled, have the potential to build local ownership and to develop and scale up successful community interventions. Instruments of social dialogue are an intrinsic element of the work of many women’s civil society organizations. Social dialogue is used for mobilizing and sensitizing local communities, but it is equally used with the local authorities in the water sector– community interface. It is also practiced at both national and international levels, giving decision-makers a better understanding of realities on the ground.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Much of the remaining challenges to provide water security for all lie in rural areas and urban slums of the developing world, where water sources are remote, scarce and/or contaminated, and where customary law prevails, both in terms of water rights and with respect to gender equality and the position of women in public life. These are some of the challenges that need to be addressed in the post-2015 development agenda, given the structural nature of rural-urban disparities in water access, and the social and economic development gaps, generally.

There is mounting evidence that effective water cooperation is helped by a human rights-based approach, which means that the interests of different parties are recognized and the legitimacy and interdependency of the roles of different stakeholders are taken into account. Participation is a key element of the human rights-based approach. While States are the prime duty bearers for providing the basic water needs and their political will is essential, meaningful progress will only be made if other stakeholders join in and fulfil their specific roles. But participation is not a given, especially for marginalized groups that do not have a say in policy decisions that concern them. As such, women’s voice, agency, participation, and leadership in the water and sanitation domains should be considered and actively promoted.

A clear definition of roles and responsibilities is needed for the Institutional mechanisms guiding water cooperation. Strengthening institutional mechanisms requires resources and should also include strengthening partnerships with civil society organizations that have complementary roles and expertise. Civil society organizations have the capacity to reach, empower, represent and/or defend vulnerable and socially excluded groups – as well as to trigger change and social innovation. The roles of women’s civil society organizations may vary but typically include awareness raising, creating community engagement, coordinating action, monitoring, strengthening women’s capacities, bridging between governments and citizens, and influencing decision-making on issues of mutual concern.

Budgets for water and sanitation related programs and projects are often skewed towards infrastructure and do not allocate sufficient resources to the social dimension of water provision and management, notably empowerment, capacity strengthening and local ownership building, which are core elements of women-led projects and indispensable for making decentralized systems function sustainably.

Targeted investments are needed to bring women’s civil society organizations to the level and scale that are needed to deliver on the proposed water SDG and targets. The four prerequisites to enable meaningful engagement of women consist, first and foremost, of governments willing to involve women in decision-making processes backed up by valid legislation, policies, and regulations. Secondly, decision-making should be inclusive and on the basis of equality, which means equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for women and men in their different – and similar – roles in society. This is a key element of good governance and a principal responsibility of all levels of government under the human rights based approach. Furthermore, women will be motivated to engage if concrete results may be expected. Providing an enabling environment for women’s leadership in water projects will produce manifold results in terms of cost efficiency and sustainability of interventions as well as the spin off for social and economic development. Last but not lease, investment is needed in the social capital of women’s organizations facilitates community involvement and brings to the fore women’s skills and leadership that can be effectively used for building and strengthening decentralized water governance.

References:

• BORDIA DAS, M.: The Rising Tide: A New Look at Water and Gender, 2017, World Bank Publications.https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/27949/W17068.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y

• BOUMAN-DENTENER, A.: Women as Agents of Change in Water – Reflections and Experiences from the Field, WfWP in cooperation with UN Women and UNW-DPAC, 2015.

• https://www.womenforwater.org/uploads/7/7/5/1/77516286/women_as_agents_of_change_in_water-_reflections_on_experiences_from_the_field.pdf

• BOUMAN-DENTENER, A.: Water Seekers, Carriers and Keepers: The Global and Gender Divide, 2017, in: D. Devlaeminck et al. (eds.), The Human Face of Water Security, Water Security in a New World, DOI 10. 1007/978-3-319-50161-1_7. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 13.

• BOUMAN-DENTENER, A. & DEVOS, B.: Civil Society – key contributors to water and sustainable development, 2015. http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/waterandsustainabledevelopment2015/pdf/OP_CivilSociety_4themes_FORMAT.pdf

• CLEMENT, F. & KARKI, E.: When Water Security Programmes Seek to Empower Women – A Case Study from Western Nepal, 2018, in: C. Fröhlich et al. (eds), Water Security across the Gender Divide, Water Security in a New World. © Springer International Publishing AG.

• ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR EUROPE. Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, London, 1999.

• FILMER WILSON, E. The Human Rights-Based Approach to Development: the Right to Water, 2005. http://www.crin.org/docs/right-to-water.pdf

• FLETCHER, A. J.: More than Women and Men: A Framework for Gender and Intersectionality Research on Environmental Crisis and Conflict, 2018, in: C. Fröhlich et al. (eds), Water Security across the Gender Divide, Water Security in a New World. © Springer International Publishing AG; in press.

• GLOBAL WATER PARTNERSHIP (GWP). Gender Strategy, 2014. http//www.womenforwater.org.

• GRANT, M., HUGGET, C., WILLET, J. & WILBUR, J.: Gender Equality & Goal 6: The Critical Connection, Australian Water Partnership, 2017. https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/115346/1/Gender-Goal6-Critical-Connection.pdf

• High Level International Conference on Water Cooperation: Chair Summary, 2013.http://www.womenforwater.org/uploads/7/7/5/1/77516286/dushanbe_gender_forum_outcome_documents_eng.pdf

• KEVANY, K. & HUISINGH, D.: A review of progress in empowerment of women in rural water management decision-making processes. Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol 60, 2013. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.03.041

• MYRTTINEN, H., CREAMADES, R., FRÖHLICH, C & GIOLI, G.: Bridging Troubled Waters: Water Security Across the Gender Divide, 2018, in: C. Fröhlich et al. (eds), Water Security across the Gender Divide, Water Security in a New World. © Springer International Publishing AG; in press.

• OECD. Water Governance in OECD Countries: A Multi-Level Approach. OECD Studies on Water. OECD Publishing, 2011, available at: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/environment/water-governance-in-oecd-countries_9789264119284-en#page4

• OHCHR. Realizing the human rights to water and sanitation: a handbook, booklet 7: Principles – the right to participation, pages 57 – 72. OHCHR, Geneva, 2014. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Water/Handbook/Book7_Principles.pdf.

• SULTANA, F.: Gender and Water in a Changing Climate: Challenges and Opportunities, 2018, in: C. Fröhlich et al. (eds), Water Security across the Gender Divide, Water Security in a New World. © Springer International Publishing AG; in press.

• UN DESA: The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics, Chapter 7 – Environment, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.K/19, 2010. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW_full%20report_BW.pdf

• UNECE. Gender Action Plan: Key to Regional Sustainable Development http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/Gender/publication/ECE_GAP_Framework_website1.pdf

• UNICEF: Gender and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), 2010, available at: http://www.unicef.org/esaro/7310_Gender_and_WASH.html

• UNITED NATIONS: The Millennium Development Goals Report 2014. United Nations, New York, available at: http://www.us.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/MDG/english/UNDP_MDGReport_EN_2014Final1.pdf

• UNITED NATIONS. UNGA Resolution 70/1: Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1), 2015, available at: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E

• UNITED NATIONS. UNGA Resolution 58/217: International Decade for Action “Water for Life” 2005-2015 (A/RES/58/217), December 2003. http://www.un.org/es/comun/ docs/?symbol=A/RES/58/217&lang=E.

• UNITED NATIONS: Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Agenda 21 – Part I - Chapter 18 - Protection of the Quality and Supply of Freshwater Resources: Application of Integrated Approaches to the Development, Management and Use of Water Resources. Rio de Janeiro, 1992. http://www.un-documents.net/a21-18.htm

• UNITED NATIONS. The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development, Dublin, Ireland, 1992. http://www.un-documents.net/h2o-dub.htm

• UN WOMEN: A transformative stand-alone goal on achieving gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment: imperatives and key components, New York, 2013. http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2013/7/post-2015-long-paper#view.

• UN WOMEN. The World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development, New York, 2014, Chapter 6. http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2014/unwomen_surveyreport_advance_16oct.pdf

• WOMEN FOR WATER PARTNERSHIP (WfWP, 2013). Report on Dushanbe Gender Forum to the High Level International Conference on Water Cooperation, 2013. http://www.womenforwater.org.

• WOODHOUSE, P. & MULLER, M.: Water Governance — An Historical Perspective on Current Debates. In: World Development, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.014

• WORLD BANK: Issues and Options for Improving Engagement Between the World Bank and Civil Society Organizations, EXT, ESSD, OPCS, 2005, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/CSO/Resources/ConsultationsSourcebook_Feb2007.pdf

Water Security: furthering peaceful co-existence of people and societies

By: de Albuquerque, Catarina; Bouman-Dentener, Alice
and Maestu, Josefina

Source: Moita, Luís; Pinto, Luís Valença (Coord.) (2017). Espaços económicos e espaços de segurança. Lisboa: UA L; OBSERVARE. Pp 699 - 724.

Introduction

Water is life, a source of well-being and development. It is key to the survival of all species and the planet and “essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”.  With the global population growing exponentially and industrialization and economic development on a steep increase, the world is facing mounting water challenges. Technology and good water management practices from local level to river basins contribute to improving access to services, to allocating water fairly and protecting the resource base.

Beyond technical and management issues, in today’s increasingly globalized world, water surfaces as a security matter.  Next to the importance of water for development, its availability and allocation influence peace and stability locally, nationally, in transboundary basins, and beyond. Water is increasingly acknowledged to have strategic global relevance. Countries, commercial entities, academia and civil society organizations acknowledge their obligations and/or responsibilities in contributing to water security; and voice their common concerns about the water and sanitation status quo - which is already precariously balanced. Moving beyond the tipping point would be disastrous.

This chapter addresses water security as a global concern, both from a resource management perspective and in relation to social stability and peace. It first describes how water security is defined, what are the key challenges and how they are being addressed.  The second part of this chapter ventures into the emerging domain of water as a global security issue. The human rights to water and sanitation are discussed in this context. The third part of this chapter looks into how water security can be seen as a global public good requiring collective action. Finally we present some concluding ideas on the way forward.

1 Evolving perceptions on water security

Defining Water Security

The way in which water security has been defined over time reflects the global water management trends and follows the evolving perceptions and prioritization of water challenges in the water community.

At the onset of the new Millennium, the independent World Commission for Water in the 21st Century presented its vision for a water secure world. Water security was described as: providing water to meet the basic needs (drinking water, sanitation, food and energy) of every human in a manner that works in harmony with nature.

The Global Water Partnership, considering water security as the foundation and the “glue” for sustainable development, and integrated water resources management (IWRM) as the means to achieve water security, presented a similar but more comprehensive definition: Water security, at any level from the household to the global, means that every person has access to enough safe water at affordable cost to lead a clean, healthy and productive life, while ensuring that the natural environment is protected and enhanced.

Water security has subsequently evolved from being essentially people-centered and pro-poor, to a more holistic concept that applies to both the developing and developed world, to traditional economies and industrialized countries and to different socio-cultural and environmental circumstances. In the course of this process, Grey and Sadoff (2007) define water security as: the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, the environment and economies.

UN Water and individual United Nations (UN) Agencies have contributed much to the centrality of water in the global to national sustainable development discourse, amongst others through the International Year of Water Cooperation and the International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005 – 2015.  Consecutive World Water Development Reports have sensitized world leaders to take water security seriously and to address the issues outside the water box. The term ‘water security’ however, remained much debated and sometimes controversial in the United Nations until consensus was reached on the below working definition.

The working definition agreed by the United Nations in 2013 points to the adverse impacts of water risks on human well-being, nature and the global economy and links it to peace and security.  The UN-Water definition reads:  the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustainable livelihoods, human wellbeing and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.

According to this definition, achieving water security considers the following aspects:

1. Ensuring access to affordable basic water and sanitation services for all as a basic human need, helping reduce poverty, advance education, and increase living standards, especially for the most vulnerable;

2. Provide water adequately for the different uses and manage water efficiently to contribute to socio-economic development through agriculture, energy, tourism, industry, and services;

3. Ensure water is managed in an integrated and sustainable manner to prevent pollution, and ensure the preservation of ecosystems, reduce waterborne diseases without compromising the needs of future generation;

4. Ensure water is managed so as to improve the resilience to water related disasters in the context of climate change.

Addressing water security challenges.

Water resource management challenges

Water use is growing at twice the rate of population growth. Higher rates of urbanization will result in a growing demand for drinking water and economic uses.  Feeding a world of eight billion people will require more water for food. The demands for energy will more than double, with hydropower called upon to make a far greater contribution than today.  Consequently, water withdrawals are predicted to increase by 50 percent by 2025 in developing countries, and by 18 percent in developed countries. By 2025, it is estimated that 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.

The protection of the resource base is under continuous stress as human water demands and productive needs increase (e.g. UNEP 2001 ; IBD 2013). Countries with difficult water dynamics (high rainfall and runoff variability) – are often the world’s poorest countries. While in these countries, the level of institutional and infrastructural investment needed is very high and the ability to invest is low. Meaning that their hydrology hampers their development. And to add to these challenges, the impact of climate change will threaten economies and put further strain on the environmental flows required to maintain ecosystems.  

Water is the primary link through which climate change affects people’s welfare and ecosystems. Climate change is likely to impact the entire hydrological cycle and then the distribution and availability of water across time and space.  Records over the hydrological past will become of relative value to forecast our water future and to plan and manage water infrastructures for the longer term. Water is linked to almost all climate related risks, such as longer and more severe droughts, more frequent floods, losses in snow and glaciers to regulate runoff, rising sea levels, reduced river flows, and storms. Countries need to enhance their capacity for adaptation and to make their infrastructures and their economic activities less vulnerable and more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events.

Van Beek and Arriens (2014) distinguish two approaches towards water security: The developmental approach (following the traditional IWRM approach) seeks to increase water security over time through adaptive policy and planning processes that address the core water security issues of a country or a location. The risk-based approach is more direct and concentrates on managing specific risks and reducing vulnerabilities. GWP furthermore points to the importance of breaking the multiple components of water security down into key dimensions and quantifiable indicators that match the scope of the water security framework under consideration.

Taking a risk-based approach, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) distinguishes four water risks:

• Risk of shortage (including droughts): lack of sufficient water to meet demand (in both the short- and long-term) for beneficial uses by all water users (households, businesses and the environment);

• Risk of inadequate quality: lack of water of suitable quality for a particular purpose or use;

• Risk of excess (including floods): overflow of the normal confines of a water system (natural or built), or the destructive accumulation of water over areas that are not normally submerged;

• Risk of undermining the resilience of freshwater systems: exceeding the coping capacity of the surface and groundwater bodies and their interactions (the “system”); possibly crossing tipping points, and causing irreversible damage to the system’s hydraulic and biological functions.

A joint GWP/OECD taskforce on water security and sustainable growth has analyzed the global status of water security grouping the headline risks somewhat differently: (1) droughts and water scarcity; (2) floods; (3) inadequate water supply and sanitation; and (4) ecosystem degradation and pollution. A global assessment of relative economic impacts of water insecurity shows that the largest impacts are in Asia, and that only Europe and North America generally experience water security, with risks reduced to tolerable levels.

Risk management and preparedness are essential components of water security. It requires a forward-looking organization, that analysis water related risks in a context of uncertainty. It also demands that we build resilient systems.

Challenges for access to basic services

As of 2015 91% of the global population used an improved drinking water source, up from 76% in 1990. This means 6.6 billion of the global population had then access to improved sources of drinking water; and 2.6 billion people have gained access to an improved drinking water source since 1990. This also means that the world met the MDG target for water. While the least developed countries (LDCs) did not meet the target, 42% of the current population of these countries has gained access since 1990.

No information is available on the number of people without access to safe water, purely because water quality is (still) not measured at the global level. These global figures camouflage even deeper inequalities, since not only are there obvious and profound differences between the developed and the developing world, but these differences are also present within developing countries themselves, as the rural population without access to an improved drinking water source is over five times greater than that found in urban areas. Furthermore, in several Sub-Saharan African countries, more than one quarter of the population takes longer than 30 minutes to make one water collection round trip – research having shown that in these cases those people will collect progressively less water, eventually failing to meet their families’ minimum daily water needs. In these situations, the undertaking of numerous trips per day to collect drinking water also implies enormous economic costs.

The consequences of lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation are enormous. An estimated 1.6 million people, mostly children under the age of 5, die each year from water and sanitation-related diseases; with research suggesting that poor sanitation may be linked to as much as a quarter of all under-five deaths. The health and lives of more than half the world's children are constantly threatened by environmental hazards as they get sick through contact with excreta in their environment. The links between access to water and sanitation and health are well documented, WHO estimating that 88 percent of diarrheal disease is caused by unsafe water and sanitation. Diarrhea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.  Lack of access to water and sanitation can also have serious negative impacts on the enjoyment of the right to education, as each year 443 million school days are lost due to sickness caused by poor water and sanitation conditions.

Lack of access to sanitation and safe drinking water perpetuates poverty – people living in poverty cannot afford to obtain access, and without access, their capacity to work, go to school and engage in other productive activities is limited. Women and girls are particularly affected as they are mainly responsible for collecting water and caring for sick family members. Children, especially girls, do not go to school because they are sick, or because there are no toilets, or no sex-segregated toilets. In many cases, prohibited forms of discrimination are key factors in understanding who has access to sanitation and water and who does not. The lack of access to safe drinking water, basic sanitation and good hygiene practices is the third most significant risk factor for poor health in developing countries with high mortality rates.

2. Water: A global security issue?

Water and security in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda

Water security is a term that has an intuitive significance and appeal. It reflects a common understanding for the need to harness water-risks and to safeguard sufficient and safe water to sustain life and ecosystems. It helps to ensure the well-being of people and to enable sustainable and equitable development of countries and societies. As such, it can also contribute to peace and stability.  

In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the holistic approach to achieve water security is captured in the dedicated water goal – SDG 6. The new development agenda also has peace as a cross-cutting issue and includes a dedicated goal – SDG 16, to 'Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels'. Furthermore, the targets addressing the transnational stresses that are drivers for conflict include target 13.1: ‘Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries’.

The implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is envisaged to be primarily driven through national level action, but global processes are needed to enable, facilitate and monitor the national efforts. Water security as a global public good addresses the SDG6 – SDG16 interface and would provide a framework to address trans-national drivers for conflict is a crucial element to support peaceful co-existence of societies and water security is a main driver to consider as it is the foundation and the glue for sustainable development. 

While the developmental and risk-based approach are complementary strategies that look at water security from the social and economic development perspective, treating water security as a global public good would transcend the development domain, therewith following the paradigm shift of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that emphasizes innovative forms of integration and an all-of-society engagement and partnership.

Towards recognition

At the United Nation Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 the global community acknowledged the alarming deterioration of water resources, the detrimental effect on ecosystems and increasing water scarcity for a rapidly increasing world population. Integrated Water Resources Management became the new paradigm to address the mounting water challenges at community-, country- and/or (transboundary) river basin level.  It is at the onset of the new Millennium, that the World Water Vision for the 21st Century linked IWRM to achieving a water secure world1.  

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) took the lead in making the concept operational, fueling the water security discourse at various levels through its global network, sensitizing national and global leaders to the fact that water security is not solely a water sector issue, promoting IWRM and participatory water governance as the way forward, and encouraging national governments as well as individual other sectors to consider water in their policies and planning.

The efforts of the UN and of the global water community to place water security in the wider geopolitical context, gained momentum through a mounting recognition by prominent leaders outside the water realm that water security is not the sole responsibility of the water sector, but an important societal issue with strong links to food security, energy security and different aspects of economic and human development.  Since 2009 the World Economic Forum prioritized water security as a global risk, naming water crises as the highest global risk for the next 10 years.

The working definition of Water Security agreed by the United Nations in 2013 not only points to the adverse impacts of water risks on human well-being, nature and the global economy, but also paves the way towards recognizing water security for its importance for peace and political stability.  

2012 saw the call from the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 Government leaders and Head of States, to the Security Council to recognize water as an urgent security issue and a top concern.  

In November 2016, the Security Council convened a meeting on Water Security. Expert studies on contemporary armed conflicts were quoted to demonstrate that “water is seldom the single cause of armed conflict. However, water can be among the important contributing factors. Moreover, water usually becomes a military and strategic tool during an armed conflict, a weapon of war that most often affects civilian populations. It is in that context that some of the most serious concerns arise”. There are striking examples where water has been used as a weapon during armed conflicts. During the war in Syria, water infrastructures were destroyed and supplies poisoned. In Gaza there were attacks on the wastewater treatment plant.  

Some countries pointed to water as a security concern outside armed conflicts. Lack of access to and failure to provide proper functioning water supply and sanitation may lead to community tensions, instability and could result in local riots and conflict. Water shortages and extreme events can also become a source of instability leading to massive migrations and displacement of populations. As shortages in some river basins and local areas become more acute more social and political tensions could arise, including in shared river basins. Droughts and food shortages in Syria have likely contributed to the unrest that triggered the war.  The International Organization of Migration estimated that about 200 million people will be forcibly displaced by 2050 due to threats caused by increasing water scarcity. Shrinking water resources in Lake Chad Basin is seen by some neighboring governments as a factor in poverty and conflict affecting the region and producing a huge humanitarian crisis, with increasing concentrations of internally displaced persons in urban areas.

In a 2016 report on “Early warning and economic, social and cultural rights”, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) clearly (re)affirms the links between peace, security and access to water, stating that “water-related disputes can lead to social unrest and violent protest”. The said reports refers to the clash that took place in 2007 between 30,000 farmers and the police in the Indian state of Orissa, because the Government had decided to allow a large number of industries to draw water from the Hirakud dam, depriving the farmers of their source of irrigation. The report also affirms that social unrest can also be provoked by poor or inequitable management of water services, stating that “disputes may arise over water connections for suburban or rural areas, service liability and, in particular, prices. Given that the State is responsible for providing drinking water, in many countries, disputes over water supply management often arise between communities and State authorities. Protests are particularly likely when the general public suspects that water services are being managed in a corrupt manner or that public resources are being diverted for private gain.” Finally OHCHR recognizes that problems arising from water supply management can lead to violent conflict, as witnessed during the confrontations that erupted in 2000 in Cochabamba, the third-largest city in Bolivia, following the privatization of the city’s water utility. The report explains that “months of civil unrest culminated in the decision of the Government to send the army into Cochabamba and to declare a state of emergency throughout the country. Several days of violence left more than 100 people injured and one person dead. The protests eased only after the Government agreed to revoke the consortium’s concession and to return management of the utility to the municipal authorities”.

Agreement on water as a security issue is not unanimous. During the 2016 debate at the Security Council, some countries voiced concerns about treating water as a global security issue. They argued that water needs to be seen as a means to promote national development. It is in the realm of national sovereignty and needs to be treated in the context of bilateral treaties. Regional and transboundary agreements among riparian countries and institutional frameworks may be favored as a way to support cooperation and appropriate management.  

By addressing Water Security in the Security Council, the international community has started to recognize that water is a strategic resource which has an impact not only on development, but also on peace and security. It’s not only a transboundary issue, but a global security issue.

According to the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, this is a matter that the international community must act upon. To use his words: “Let us commit to invest in water security as a means to long term international peace and security”.

The Human Rights to Water and Sanitation as major stepping-stones.

The resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council regarding the human rights to water and sanitation are part of the international legal framework that States and other actors have agreed to use, including during humanitarian crises and armed conflicts. These resolutions and the normative content of the human rights to water and sanitation guide different actors – including civil society and international organizations – in identifying early causes of unrest, instability or even conflict. As was stated by OHCHR, water crises “illustrate how violations of economic, social and cultural rights are often the root cause of violence, social unrest and conflict. The analysis of economic, social and cultural rights should therefore be at the forefront of any national or international early warning effort.”

The process to recognize water and sanitation as human rights spans several decades. An important stepping stone was the adoption, in 2002, by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, of General Comment No. 15 stating that “the right to water clearly falls within the category of guarantees essential for securing an adequate standard of living, particularly since it is one of the most fundamental conditions for survival”. The Committee also recognized the right to water as an essential component of the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to the highest attainable standard of health, enshrined in articles 11 and 12 of the ICESCR. The Committee asserted that everyone is entitled to “sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.

On 28 July 2010 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution which recognized the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights. This resolution was passed with a significant number of abstentions (41 reflecting the concern of UN member states with issues of procedure, but also with the fact that the legal implications of a declared right to water - both domestic and international obligations of countries  - had not yet been carefully and fully considered.

Interestingly the linkages of the human right to water and sanitation and other human rights have been emphasized, mainly because they were seen to be derived or related to other human rights. The resolution 15/9 of the United Nations Human Rights Council further “affirmed that the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity”. This resolution was adopted by consensus, being it the first time where UN member states universally supported this human right.

Recognizing that water and sanitation human rights changes the legal obligations of governments in terms of respecting, protecting and fulfilling these rights. States have an immediate obligation to guarantee non-discrimination in the exercise of the human rights to water and sanitation. In practice this means that states are obliged not only to ensure that their national laws, policies, programmes and practices do not discriminate against anyone, but also to take affirmative action in order to ensure that those groups that have traditionally not enjoyed these rights are not left behind in gaining access.

3 Water Security as a global public good?

The UNDP defines a global public good as “a public good with benefits that are strongly transversal in terms of countries (covering more than one group of countries), people (accruing to several, preferably all, population groups) and generations (extending to both current and future generations, or at least meeting the needs of current generations without foreclosing development options for future generations).” (Kaul et al. 1999, pp 509-10)

Global security is the main example of a global public good because once there is security no one can be excluded from benefiting and the use by one does not diminish the overall availability.

Water is a commodity that is excludable (allocated and consumed by a specific user under conditions such as a contract or license); and it is rivalrous in consumption (available water cannot be consumed by different users at the same time).
As such, water in itself cannot be considered as a public good.

Water Security – and especially global water security- however, could be considered as a global public good. The overall benefits of Water Security and/or negative effects of water insecurity can extend across countries and regions, across rich and poor population groups, an across generations. There are strong externality aspects of Water Security, both at the local level and across national borders.

“With resources depleting, supplies of freshwater could be reduced by 25% in the next 20 years, mismanagement of water and climate and bad politics could have serious consequences. By 2050 at least one in every four human beings will likely live in a country affected by chronic and recurring shortage of water due to climate change. With 2 billion people living in shared river basins water is strategically important at local and regional level, but it is also a global security matter as it affects one third of the world’s population”

The President of the Strategic Foresight Group (Security Council meeting on Water Security, 2016)

Failures to provide services or increasing water scarcity can lead to humanitarian crisis and massive migrations. There are other wide economic externality effects of lack of Water Security that have been extensively illustrated. Although the positive effects of improved access and sanitation may affect specific individuals or economic activities these can be added up to gains/looses for the economy (in terms of GDP, employment, productivity). Benefits resulting, for instance, from being better prepared to deal with extreme events – where hydrological fluctuations are decoupled from economic performance-  may transcend the national borders and have cross-country effects.

Water Security as a global public good requires international collective action. There may be a role for international organisations, and international stakeholders for consensus-building and collective decision-making as it yields significant external benefits, across multiple nations. There are multiple interdependencies of the “different securities” (food, Climate Change, health, political) to be able to realize the full the benefits of cooperation.

Multiple interconnections: the case of how global climate change risks affect access to water and sanitation services

Climate Change risks present a serious obstacle to the realization of the rights to water and sanitation. Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts upon human populations and ecosystems, particularly due to predicted changes in water quality and quantity. The impacts of climate change need to be seen in light of its direct effects on water resources as well as its indirect influence on other external drivers of change, in particular increasing population pressures and changing consumption patterns. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that in many regions of the globe, changes to the supply and quality of freshwater resources resulting from climate change may imperil sustainable development, poverty reduction and child mortality goals.

Interlinkages and interdependences are important. Water and sanitation cannot be analyzed in isolation from other human rights. Both may be impacted by violations of other rights, and both are indispensable for the realization of the rights to life, health, housing and education, among others. For example, water collection and lack of adequate or appropriate sanitation facilities keeps girls out of school, and access to clean water and sanitation can reduce the risk of child mortality by as much as 50 percent.

The absence of clean water and sanitation is a major cause of poverty and malnutrition, and water insecurity linked to climate change may increase malnutrition by 75-125 million people by 2080.17 Rapidly swelling urbanization combined with increasing demand for freshwater and insufficient sanitation infrastructure, accentuated by climate change, poses threats to public health and increases the prevalence of water-borne diseases. For example, endemic morbidity and mortality due to diarrheal disease associated with floods and droughts are expected to rise in East, South and South-East Asia due to projected changes in the hydrological cycle. These empirical links are reflected in the normative content of particular rights.

Climate change will magnify the uneven distribution of risk skewing disaster impacts even further towards poor communities in developing countries. One recent quantitative assessment of the human impacts of disasters found that “countries with high levels of income inequality experience the effects of climate disasters more profoundly than more equal societies.” The OHCHR notes that climate change impacts “will be felt most acutely by those segments of the population who are already in vulnerable situations due to factors such as poverty, gender, age, minority status, and disability.” Approximately 1 billion people live in informal settlements in developing countries’ cities: many of these are in hazard-prone areas. Insofar as the right to water is concerned, other individuals and groups who have traditionally faced difficulties in exercising this right include indigenous peoples, refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, migrant workers, prisoners and detainees.

Women and girls face specific obstacles to the enjoyment of their rights to water and sanitation and bear the brunt of increasing water scarcity and poverty. They are most often the ones sacrificing their time and development opportunities to fetch water, are frequently responsible for the provision of food and water in the household, and face particular challenges in accessing sufficient, safe and culturally appropriate sanitation facilities. Therefore women and girls will often be disproportionately affected by the adverse impacts of climate change upon the rights to water and sanitation. Moreover, recent research by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) suggests that climate change will disproportionately affect children by exacerbating existing health risks and disrupting the natural resource base sustaining nutrition and water security, among numerous other factors.

Extreme weather events and reduced quantity and quality of water already are leading causes of malnutrition and child death and illness, including through poor sanitation. Climate change will be likely to exacerbate these stresses.

Collectively achieving water security

Framing water problems as a matter of security means that we need to address them collectively in a coordinated manner. At national level, governments create the enabling conditions for water security through planning, direct provision, financing, subsidies or regulation.However, security can only be achieved by cooperating among sectors, among levels of administration and different stakeholders.

“Preventing and mitigating water risks is considered an absolute necessity and joint responsibility and active engagement of the private sector in sustainable water use and management is vital” WEF water initiative.

There is much evidence of successful water cooperation to achieve water security at different levels: among countries, among stakeholders in river basins, between farmers, between companies and their communities, and between local authorities and local stakeholders.

A strong history of cooperation in water management shows the importance of collective action to provide water security. There have been only 37 incidents of acute conflict between riparian states over water since 1948 involving violence. In the same period, 295 international water agreements were signed (UNESCO 2013, )

Adeel, Aslov and Maestu (2015) have identified different cases of cooperation in transboundary basins. These are summarized in the Box below.

Africa:

Africa has 63 river basins, of which 20 have international agreements in effect while 16 have institutionalized transboundary forums. Progress has been built over time, with areas in South Africa having more equitable rights established after apartheid policies were revoked. Many continental, regional, and national organizations have been developed to focus on cooperation, like the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Niger Basin Authority (NBA), Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC), Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO), Lake Tanganyika Authority (LTA), and the African Ministers´ Council on Water (AMCOW). SADC created a Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems in 1995 that later was revised and adopted to be in line with the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention.

Asia:

South Asian water resources connect many countries that have had military conflicts in the past with each other. With many of these countries being located entirely within an international water basin, water is a central topic. India and Pakistan signed the Indus Water Treaty in 1960. In Central Asia, more coordination has been seen, especially in response to the Aral Sea disaster. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan formed the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia and pledged 1% of their budgets to help the sea recover. Also, in South Asia there is still progress being made towards cooperation. The Mekong River Commission has been helping countries in the lower Mekong basin move from humanitarian cooperation to economic cooperation.

Middle East:

While for other areas water cooperation may be a means for development, in the Middle East, water is especially important for security and peace between countries. Israel and Jordan have come to agreements, like the 1994 Peace Treaty that included allocations of the Jordan River and joint efforts to prevent water scarcity, but cooperation is even more important today. A large project to divert water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea has been developed by the World Bank and three parties – Israel, Jordan, and Palestine – have signed a trilateral agreement in 2014. The Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) was created in the Oslo Accords in 1996 and has been an influential third party bringing Israel and Palestine together for water cooperation.

Overall evidence shows that achieving water security through cooperation has endured and has served and serves everyday to manage differences in interests successfully. This has been the case for more than 50 years standing in water cooperation between such diverse partners such as Finland and Russia, the long history of cooperation among irrigation farmers in Mediterranean countries and in India (Suresh A. Kulkarni, and Avinash C Tyagi. 2013) dealing with disputes through water tribunals and juries. They provide compelling evidence on where we have to go and what takes to achieve water security.

International legal frameworks, such as the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International adopted in Helsinki in 1992 at a global scale or the European Union’s Water Framework Directive at a regional one, have played a fundamental role in fostering cooperation agreements. They have been key in the Sava River, the Tisza River and in the Albufeira Convention, as well as in other countries in Europe or other regions in the world.  

Some lessons emerging from observing collective action and cooperation efforts can be highlighted. This includes active and continuous involvement of a third party mediator such as in the Indus Water Treaty, the Senegal River, the Zambezi and Orange-Senque negotiations. It includes demands the consideration of creative methods of financing, such as in the Nile Waters Treaty, and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Creation of incentives through shared benefit models such as in the Senegal River and Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes. Joint Water assessments/data analysis such as those carried out by the UNECE Water; Joint Scenario planning such as in the Okavango River Basin, the Mekong River, the Colorado River, building partnerships and stakeholder involvement and creating joint management structures.

A major lesson to be learned from water-related development efforts over the past decades is that there is no one-solution-fits-all strategy. Each country has its own unique set of physical, social, economic, political, and environmental circumstances that will determine a country’s pathway towards increasing water security.

4 In conclusion

The near-term future of sustainable development has been outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development agreed by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. It includes a dedicated and comprehensive water goal – SDG6, which sets the scene for sound and participatory water governance that addresses water security holistically. It also contains a goal to invest in peaceful and inclusive societies – SDG16. Water Security as a global public good would address the SDG6 – SDG16 interface.

The implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda is envisaged to be primarily driven through national level action. However, global processes are needed to enable, facilitate and monitor national (and sub-national) level action. Addressing trans-national drivers for conflict is a crucial element to support peaceful co-existence of societies and water security is a main driver to consider as water is the foundation and the glue for sustainable development. 

The strategic importance of Water Security at local, national and transboundary level has been advocated for a long time and by many organizations. Considering Water Security as a global public good provides a framework for water security as a means to deal with trans-national drivers for conflict and as a crucial element to support peaceful co-existence of peoples and societies. By addressing this interface between SDG6 on water and SDG16 on peaceful and inclusive societies it provides the basis for supporting collective action at global level. 

The International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development 2008-2018, approved by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2016, provides a platform for strengthening collective action.  It calls for improving integration and coordination in the context of the United Nations. Accordingly it can help facilitate intergovernmental coordination and improve joint action and accountability of UN agencies.  The decade’s commitment to partnerships and joint action provides a global collectively agreed framework for stakeholders at all levels to collectively contribute to Global Water Security,

References

• Adeel, Z., S. Aslov, J. Maestu, and O. Unver, 2015. Water Cooperation — Views on Progress and the Way Forward, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Hamilton, Canada.

• Ait-Kadi, Mohamed & Wouter Lincklaen Arriens (2012). Increasing Water Security: A Development Imperative. GWP-TEC Perspectives Paper.

• Boelee E, Chiramba T & Khaka E (eds) 2011. An ecosystem services approach to water and food security. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme; Colombo: International Water Management Institute.

• International Conference on Water and the Environment (1992) The Dublin Satement on Water and Sustainable Development.

• ESCR (2016). Early Warning and Economic and Social Rights. Geneva: Office of the High Commissioner.

• European Union (2000), Water Framework Directive, Official Journal (OJ L 327) of 22 December 2000.

• GWP (2000). Towards Water Security: A Framework for Action. Global Water Partnership Secretariat, Sweden.

• Grey, D. & Sadoff, C. (2007). Sink or Swim? Water Security for Growth and Development. Water Policy 9 (6), pp. 545 – 571.

• Kaul et al (1999). Global Public Goods; International Cooperation in the 21st Century. New York, Oxford University Press.

• Maestu Josefina (2015). A 10-Year Story: The Water for Life Decade 2005 – 2015 and Beyond. Zaragoza, UNO-IDfA.

• Samuelson, Paul (1954), “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 36, No. 4, Nov. 1954, pp. 387-389.

• Sadoff, C.W., Hall, J.W., Grey, D., Aerts, J.C.J.H., Ait-Kadi, M., Brown, C., Cox, A., Dadson, S., Garrick, D., Kelman, J., McCornick, P., Ringler, C., Rosegrant, M., Whittington, D. and Wiberg, D. (2015). Securing Water, Sustaining Growth. Report of the GWP/OECD Task Force on Water Security and Sustainable Growth, UK: University of Oxford.

• Suresh A. Kulkarni, and Avinash C Tyagi (2013). Participatory Irrigation Management: Understanding the Role of Cooperative Culture, paper presented at the 2013 UN-Water Conference. Zaragoza: UNO- IDfA

• Tushaar Shah (2016). “Increasing water security: the key to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals”. GWP-TEC 22 Paper. Sweden, Global Water Partnership.

• UNECE (1992) Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, United Nations.

• UNESCO (2013), Report on the International Year of Water Cooperation. Paris: UNESCO.

• Position Paper on Climate Change and the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation, prepared by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation

• United Nations (2016) Report on the Security Council Meeting on Water Security, SC/12598. New York: United Nations.

• UN0 IDfA (2015), Report on the Annual UN-Water Conference: Water and Sustainable Development. Zaragoza: UNO IDfA.

• UN-Water (2013). Water Security & the Global Water Agenda. UN-Water Analytical Brief. Geneva: UN-Water.

• United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (2013). Water and Biodiversity – Natural Solutions for Water Security. Montreal: Secretariat of the UNCBD.

• WHO (2012). Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage,. Geneva: World Health Organization.

• World Economic Forum Water Initiative (2011). Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus. Island Press Washington, Covelo, London.

• WEF 2016, Global Risk Report: Water Crises the Highest Concern for the Next 10 Years, World Economic Forum.

• World Water Assessment Programme (2015). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015: Water for a Sustainable World. Paris: UNESCO.

• World Water Commission (2000). Water Secure World; Vision for Water, Life and the Environment Chapter 3.

Water Seekers, Carriers and Keepers: The Global and Gender Divide

by: Alice Bouman-Dentener

Chair, a.i. Global Water Partnership
Honorary Founding President, Women for Water Partnership

Source: D. Devlaeminck et al. (eds.), The Human Face of Water Security, Water Security in a New World, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50161-1_7
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Introduction

Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [1] aims to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions by the year 2030. It is an ambitious agenda that wants to reach the furthest behind first and which emphasises the importance of combatting inequalities, including by promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls to achieve an all-of-society engagement and partnership for sustainable development.

The new Development Agenda includes a dedicated water goal – SDG #6 – underpinning the importance of water security as the foundation and the glue for achieving food and energy security and for building safe and peaceful societies in which all human beings can lead productive lives in harmony with nature. SDG #6 addresses the entire spectrum of water-related risks and includes targets for cooperation, capacity building and community involvement.

Despite the considerable progress made under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), today’s reality still is that water insecurity keeps millions of people in poverty, continues to obstruct human well-being and seriously threatens the ecosystems that sustain our planet. The World Water Development Report 2015 describes reducing poverty through water management as a useful pro-poor framework for action and points to the links with water quality, access, livelihood opportunities, capacity building and empowerment, water-related disaster prevention and management, and ecosystem management [2].

Water is in everything and when trying to find a way out of poverty, access to sufficient and safe water for basic needs, for both domestic and productive uses, is a basic requirement. According to a recent GWP/OECD report, inadequate water supply and sanitation are the most harmful risks to people and continue to have the greatest economic consequence of all water-related risks, with estimated total economic losses of US$ 260 billion annually; these losses includes the per capita estimates of the value of time spent to fetch water [3].

There is ample documentation to prove that lack of sufficient and safe water and adequate sanitation facilities is largely a rural and poverty-related phenomenon. In addition to rural/urban and wealth-related disparities, coverage is also much lower for minorities and other disadvantaged groups [4]. While gender disaggregated data in the water domain are scarce and scattered, it is safe to say that the larger burden still falls on women and girls, who are the traditional water seekers and carriers in the developing world while at the same time being largely excluded from decision-making and water management processes.

Why Work on the Water-Gender-Development Nexus

Gender statistics on water are among the least available of national-level indicators.  The MDG indicators for water have not been disaggregated by sex and 45.2% of countries do not produce any gender statistics related to water [5]. There is general consensus however, that water-related development interventions are not gender-neutral. Priorities for water allocation reflect unequal social status and power relations between women and men, resulting in situations where the water needs for women’s domestic and productive roles are often not being adequately covered. There is ample documentation to prove that, when water is not available on the premises – which is the case in the majority of Sub-Saharan African countries - the main burden for collecting water falls on women, while their participation in the management of natural resources such as water is limited [6]. Chapter 6 of the UN Women 2014 global survey on the role of women in development ascertains that the domain of water and sanitation has a particularly strong potential to transform the lives of women and girls [7].

In rural areas of the Least Developed Countries, the gender-water-development interlinkages are particularly strong and connected to agricultural livelihoods. Agriculture is the main consumer of water, accounting for 70% of total water withdrawals globally [8]. More than 80% of the world’s food is produced on family farms, the vast majority of which is small to very small [9]. Small-scale women farmers represent the majority of rural poor populations in developing countries and their numbers are increasing [10]. The Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook points to the distribution of water and land as a major determinant of poverty, with women having far less access to these essential assets than men [11]. Moreover, policy and decision-making regarding land and water management are traditionally in the male domain. As a result, policies and programmes do not always consider women’s unique knowledge, specific needs or unequal ownership rights.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the lack of attention for gender issues and women’s unequal access to natural resources is the main obstacle to improving the livelihoods of the rural poor. Paying adequate attention to the water and gender interface also increases water efficiency and avoids expensive mistakes. In Sub-Saharan Africa for instance, gender-based farming systems with women and men cultivating separate fields are quite common. Ignoring this gender dimension has caused the partial or total failure of irrigation schemes. In the daily reality of rural women, the same water source typically meets multiple needs and there is no clear distinction between domestic and productive water. Not addressing the multiple uses of water has a proven negative effect on women’s livelihood resilience, and has also been recognised as one of the causes of lower participation of women in Water User Associations [12].

The positive impact on women of investing in water for poverty alleviation and rural development is underscored by the World Bank OED report on focused Bank lending for rural water supply. This evaluation of 15 stand-alone water and sanitation projects reports, among other things, a dramatic decrease in time spent by women and children on water collection, in some cases of up to 80%, and a related increase in beneficial activities such as education, family hygiene and women’s engagement in economic activities [13].

Such examples illustrate that addressing water and gender equality together can create a positive multiplier effect. Gender equality and access to water can both have a catalytic effect on community development and they both can contribute positively to breaking the vicious cycle of poverty.

Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: an Instrument for Development

Gender roles – and therewith the positions that men and women occupy in public and private life - may vary substantially between countries, cultures, ethnicities and generations. Traditional gender divides continue to restrain women’s opportunities to lead productive lives. This makes gender equality not only a human rights principle but also an important contributor to societal development.

Since the 1970s important milestones such as the International Women’s Year (1975), the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace (1976 – 1985), and four World Conferences on Women, have united the international community behind a common set of objectives to promote women’s integration and full participation in development efforts, with concrete action plans to advance the status of women in public and private life.  The efforts undertaken have gone through several phases and transformations, from regarding women almost exclusively in terms of their development needs, to recognizing their essential contributions to the entire development process, to seeking their empowerment and the promotion of their right to full participation at all levels of human activity [14].

The development focus on women’s equal participation continued into the 21st century with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG-3) targeting gender parity in education, enrolment in the labour market and increased political participation of women as instruments of women’s social and economic empowerment [15]. However, in his report for the 60th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women [16], the United Nations Secretary General, concludes that: “Acknowledgement of the importance of women’s social, economic and political empowerment by State and Non-state actors has not been matched by concrete policy implementation and demonstrable change on the ground”.

The recent UN Women world survey on the role of women in development [7] underpins the interconnectedness between gender equality/women’s empowerment and sustainable development. Women’s agency is identified as central to many sustainable development pathways over the past 20 years in areas such as food security, climate change adaptation, and management of local ecologies including water, sanitation and energy provision, which are all critical elements for sustainable livelihoods for the poor.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a dedicated goal for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls (SDG #5) and has many references to women as development agents.

IWRM: A Participatory and Women Inclusive Approach

For the water domain, an integrated, participatory and women-inclusive approach is enshrined in the Dublin Principles for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) of 1992 [17].

IWRM is essentially a Human Rights-Based Approach (RBA). A key distinguishing feature of RBA is the process through which development outcomes are achieved. Normative principles that guide RBA development processes are: equality and non-discrimination, accountability, and participation. RBA transforms beneficiaries from passive recipients of development aid into active citizens with rights and expectations, but also with responsibilities. A fundamental benefit is that RBA unfolds the potential of the grassroots. Moving from receiving charity to claiming justice boost people’s self-esteem. It liberates the underprivileged from their position as ‘victims’ and empowers them to actively pursue their rightful entitlements, to hold their governments accountable and to participate in decision-making on issues that concern them [18].

There is mounting recognition that stakeholder participation in the development, implementation and management of water service provision is truly beneficial. In their comprehensive global assessment of water supply options, Sutherland and Fenn state to that effect [19]: “Whatever the circumstance (be it in rural Laos or urban California), the chances of improved performance and sustainability are greatly increased with the inclusion of all stakeholders in the planning and operation of water supplies.”  The Global Water Partnership describes participation of stakeholders across communities, civil society, minorities, indigenous peoples and women, and at all levels and stages, as an intrinsic element of effective water governance and conditional to achieving fair trade-offs between different water uses [20].

While women’s involvement in the provision, management and safeguarding of water is generally embraced by development and donor agencies, an extensive literature review in 2007 considers the evidence base too fragmented to conclude that the positive effect of women’s agency on water management is undisputed, nor that it yields unassailed benefits for the women themselves [21]. Local circumstances are very different and social roles not only vary across gender, meaning that women in different communities or segments of society may have different requirements for their empowerment. Enabling participation requires a good understanding of social conditions and bespoke approaches are needed that are best left to the local stakeholder groups themselves. The many best practices from women’s civil society around the globe make a compelling case to further ascertain the conditions under which women can contribute meaningfully to water security and reap the benefits of their involvement.

The Role of Women’s Civil Society

The remaining part of the global population that lacks access to water and sanitation is hard to reach. Many live in dispersed rural communities and informal settlements of developing countries, where water is often and increasingly scarce, traditional norms and gender divides prevail, and water allocation is guided by customary law in an informal water economy.

The earlier mentioned World Bank OED evaluation points out that the challenges for making decentralised rural water supply services work sustainably and reach all intended beneficiaries are typically of a social and institutional nature. Villages with higher social capital are reported to have much better results than villages where the level of social organisation was low. Social capital is what holds communities and groups together and guides their collective action. It is defined as: the internal social and cultural coherence of society, the norms and values that govern interactions between people, and the institutions in which they are embedded. Greater social capital in a community leads to more participation in service design, to more effective rules for governing implementation and to better monitoring of construction, use and maintenance.

Women traditionally unite in social networks that are characterised by norms of trust and reciprocity. These quality social relations provide a social support and safety net and enable network members to collectively resolve problems while obtaining mutual benefits. Women’s social networks are organised at local, national and international level and in a diversity of peer groups ranging from professional background, religious or political affiliation, ethnicity or nationality, to thematic interest groups. They form a substantial resource for collective action contributing to social cohesion, democracy and sustainable development [22].

A recent publication on women’s agency in water illustrates how water and sanitation interventions in which women’s civil society groups had a leading role not only effectively meet women’s practical water needs and increase their productive contributions, but also facilitate women’s engagement in public life, giving way to more inclusive decision-making, demand-responsive services, and increased cooperation with local authorities and the water sector. The positive effects of empowering women through water extend far beyond the water domain, as these grassroots groups subsequently address other development challenges in their communities [23].

The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) has conducted 35 in-depth local level surveys to gain insight in what makes women’s projects successful, how women’s social capital adds to the sustainability of local WaSH interventions and what are the benefits of a supporting network at different scales. The projects typically are relatively small and civil society initiated, have multi-stakeholder participation and practice learning by doing. They include indigenous knowledge and leverage community contributions bringing about significant change with small financial investments. Considerable time and effort are invested in information sharing, capacity development, social dialogue and building trust and understanding, whereby technically viable solutions become accepted by the community and local ownership is built. The main challenges are recognition by and cooperation with authorities, gender stereotyping and inclusion of marginalised voice; these challenges are overcome through peer support and perseverance, and if need be, using the power of the global network. A main sustainability factor is that prior to project implementation, the absorption capacity of the community is built. Women's civil society with its intrinsic social capital and bridging and bonding capacity proves an effective and low-budget medium to ensure community involvement, acceptance and trust. If this process precedes the actual project development phase, true demand driven and locally owned processes result. The global network serves to build broader support for common values and goals, to build knowledge hubs and partnerships, to share experiences, to give local and national women’s groups recognition, to provide support in fundraising and capacity development, and to influence (inter)national agenda setting [24].

Bridging the Remaining Global and Gender Divides

On the brink of the 2030 development era just under three quarters of a billion people are reported to not have access to improved drinking water sources and 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, with over one billion people still defecating in the open [25]. Indigenous peoples, minorities and the rural poor are predominant segments of the global population that still lack adequate access to safe and affordable water for their daily needs. They are also the ones that often experience gender inequalities in rights, resources and voice. This makes women’s empowerment and access to water important and complementary development instruments. Working on the SDG#5 – SDG#6 interface tackles poverty at its roots.

Closing the remaining global and gender divides in water means getting to the hard-to-reach population segments that often live in conditions where centralised water management systems are not an option. Decentralised and tailor-made solutions are needed that take the specific physical circumstances and socio-cultural contexts into consideration. Decentralised water supply and management works best when there is sufficient social capital to engage communities and guide their collective action. Women have a tradition of working through social networks. Making use of women’s civil society to mobilise their peers and their communities helps to prevent expensive mistakes and to make the complex network of local actors and social interactions in rural water provision work effectively, which, according to the cited World Bank evaluation, is invariably more elaborate and time-consuming than anticipated. Women’s civil society knows the social norms and customary laws and has the proximity needed to render moral support for a prolonged period of time.

Building social capital through empowering grassroots women’s groups requires effort, time and resources, but such pre-investment would contribute to sustainable water management and community development as a whole. While international development policies have put gender equality and women’s empowerment front and centre on the development agenda, this strategic focus is thus far not reflected in gender responsive budgeting. OECD-DAC uses a gender equality policy marker to assess the gender focus of Official Development Aid (ODA). An analysis of overall donor spending in DAC countries in 2012 reveals that of the 86,061 million USD that were screened for the gender equality policy marker (87.1% of the total allocated amount), 27% included gender equality/women’s empowerment as an explicit or as a secondary objective of the activity. A mere 2% of this so-called gender-focused funding was allocated to women’s equality organisations and institutions [26].

Poor funding marginalises the role of women’s civil society and restricts their contributions to gender sensitive water management. At the same time, audits and evaluations by, inter alia, the European Union [27], the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs [28] and the World Bank [29] indicate that a considerable number of water and sanitation projects fails to adequately service the targeted beneficiaries. Meaning that many millions invested in water and sanitation provision are effectively wasted on unsustainable interventions partly because, due to insufficient involvement of the beneficiaries, interventions fail to match their demands.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for an all-of-society engagement and partnership, clearly articulating the importance of involving non-State actors including civil society, in the implementation of this this ambitious agenda. It raises the expectation that important lessons have been learned from the past and that world leaders are willing to seriously pre-invest in strengthening those stakeholders that are often and easily forgotten, but known to be crucial for the transition from principles to practice.
Women are such a stakeholder group.

Going from the conceptual comprehension of gender issues to solving the everyday grassroots realities of differential access to and use of water is a long and winding road. If we are serious about the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, now is the time to translate the rhetoric of women’s important role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water into action and seriously pre-invest in the empowerment of women and other easily forgotten stakeholder groups to contribute meaningfully to the SDG#5 –SDG#6 interface.

References

• [1] General Assembly Resolution 70/1, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, (21 October 2015). Available from: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E

• [2] WWAP (United Nations World Water Assessment Programme) 2015. The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015: Water for a Sustainable World. Paris, UNESCO. Page 19. Available from: https://www.unesco-ihe.org/sites/default/files/wwdr_2015.pdf

• [3] Sadoff, C.W., Hall, J.W., Grey, D., Aerts, J.C.J.H., Ait-Kadi, M., Brown, C., Cox, A., Dadson, S., Garrick, D., Kelman, J., McCornick, P., Ringler, C., Rosegrant, M., Whittington, D. and Wiberg, D. (2015), Securing Water, Sustaining Growth: Report of the GWP/OECD Task Force on Water Security and Sustainable Growth, University of Oxford, UK, page 22. Available from: http://www.gwp.org/Global/About%20GWP/Publications/The%20Global%20Dialogue/SECURING%20WATER%20SUSTAINING%20GROWTH.PDF

• [4] The Millennium Development Goals Report 2014. United Nations, New York. Available from: http://www.us.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/MDG/english/UNDP_MDGReport_EN_2014Final1.pdf

• [5] World Water Assessment Programme (2013). UN WWAP UNESCO project for gender sensitive water monitoring, assessment and reporting. Available from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/water-and-gender/

• [6] UN DESA (2010). The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics. Chapter 7 – Environment, pp. 142-145. ST/ESA/STAT/SER.K/19. Available from: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW_full%20report_BW.pdf

• [7] UN Women (2014). The world survey on the Role of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development. United Nations. New York. Available from: http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2014/10/world-survey-2014

• [8] FAO (2015). AQUASTAT website, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Website accessed on 2015/01/25. Available from: http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/water_use/index.stm

• [9] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2014 International Year of Family Farming: Legacy of IYFF and the way forward. Available from: http://www.fao.org/3/b-mm296e.pdf

• [10] Rekha Mehra and Mary Hill Rojas (2008). A Significant Shift: Women, food security and agriculture in a global market place. International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Washington. Available from: http://www.icrw.org/sites/default/files/publications/A-Significant-Shift-Women-Food%20Security-and-Agriculture-in-a-Global-Marketplace.pdf

• [11] The World Bank, FAO, IFAD (2008). Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook. Module 6: Gender Mainstreaming in Agricultural Water Management. Available from: http://www.ifad.org/gender/pub/sourcebook/gal.pdf

• [12] IFAD (2007). Gender and Water: Securing water for improved rural livelihoods, the multiple-uses system approach. International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome, Italy. Available from: http://www.ifad.org/gender/thematic/water/gender_water.pdf

• [13] Ronald Parker & Tauno Skytta (2000). Rural Water Projects: Lessons from OED Evaluations. OED working paper series no. 3. The World Bank, Washington D.C. Available from: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/11/04/000094946_00102111465146/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf

• [14] UN Women – The Four Global Women’s Conferences 1975 – 1995: Historical Perspective. Available from: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/followup/session/presskit/hist.htm

• [15] Millennium Development Goals. Available from: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/gender.shtml

• [16] UN Economic and Social Council (2016). Women’s empowerment and the links to sustainable development; report of the Secretary General. E/CN.6/2016/3. Available from: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=E/CN.6/2016/3&referer=http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw60-2016/official-documents&Lang=E

• [17] The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development (1992). Available from: https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/hwrp/documents/english/icwedece.html

• [18] Emilie Filmer-Wilson (2005). The Human Rights-Based Approach to Development: The Right to Water. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/2. Available from: http://www.crin.org/docs/right-to-water.pdf

• [19] Sutherland, D.C. and Fenn, C.R. (2000). Assessment of Water Supply Options, Thematic Review IV.3 prepared as an input to the World Commission on Dams, Cape Town. Available from: http://www.dams.org

• [20] Peter Rogers & Alan Hall (2003). Effective Water Governance. GWP-TEC background paper #7. Available from: http://www.gwp.org/en/ToolBox/PUBLICATIONS/Background-papers/

• [21] Isha Ray (2007). Women, Water and Development. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 32; 421–49. Available from: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.energy.32.041806.143704

• [22] Bouman-Dentener A.M., Devos B. (2015). Civil Society: Key Contributors to Water and Sustainable Development. UN Water Annual International Zaragoza Conference “Water and Sustainable Development: from Vision to Action”. Available from: http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/waterandsustainabledevelopment2015/pdf/OP_CivilSociety_4themes_FORMAT.pdf

• [23] Bouman-Dentener A.M. (2015). Women as agents of change in water: reflections on experiences from the field. A WfWP publication in cooperation with UN Women and UNW-DPAC. Available from: http://www.womenforwater.org

• [24] Schuster-Wallace C.J., Cave K., Bouman-Dentener A.M. and Holle F. (2015). Women, WaSH, and the Water for Life Decade. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and the Women for Water Partnership. Available from: http://inweh.unu.edu/women-wash-water-life-decade/

• [25] WHO/UNICEF (2014). Progress on drinking water and sanitation, 2014 update. Geneva, World Health Organisation. Available from: http://www.unicef.org/gambia/Progress_on_drinking_water_and_sanitation_2014_update.pdf

• [26] OECD Creditor Reporting System Database. Aid in Support of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment – Donor Charts. Statistics based on DAC members’ reporting on the Gender Equality Policy Marker, April 2014. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/documentupload/Aid-support-gender.pdf

• [27] European Court of Auditors (2012). European Union Development Assistance for Drinking Water Supply and Basic Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Countries. Special report No. 13. http://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR12_13/SR12_13_EN.PDF

• [28] IOB Evaluation (2012). From Infrastructure to Sustainable Impact: Policy Review of the Dutch Contribution to drinking water and sanitation (1990 – 2011). Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/derec/netherlands/IOB%20nr%20%20366%20From%20infrastructure%20to%20sustainable%20impact.pdf

• [29] World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (2010). An Evaluation of World Bank Support, 1997 – 2007. Volume 1: Water and Development. Available from: http://ieg.worldbank.org/Data/reports/water_eval_0.pdf

The GWP Gender Strategy: Working on the interface of SDG#5 and SDG#6

By: bouman-dentener, a.m.

Source:  Solutions 7(6): pp 32-37. 
https://thesolutionsjournal.com/

The water and gender interface: a largely untapped connection

Sufficient and safe water for daily life is fundamental to overcoming poverty and building sustainable livelihoods. Despite the considerable progress made under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), today’s reality is that water insecurity keeps millions of people in poverty, continues to obstruct human well-being and seriously threatens the ecosystems that sustain our planet. Population growth, progressive economic development, rapid urbanization, increased conflict and climate change add to the challenge of ensuring water security for all. While gender disaggregated data in the water domain are scarce and scattered, it is safe to say that women and girls in the developing world are still disproportionately affected and often quite literally carry the burden of daily water provision.

The centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment in achieving sustainable development is a recurrent theme in international development policies. A good twenty years have passed since the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) adopted the Beijing Platform for Action as a universal agenda for women’s empowerment and to ensure that women can meaningfully contribute to sustainable development in all spheres. Commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action has been reconfirmed on many occasions thereafter. The UN Secretary General, in his report for the 60th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women states however, that: “Acknowledgement of the importance of women’s social, economic and political empowerment by State and Non-state actors has not been matched by concrete policy implementation and demonstrable change on the ground”.

According to the World Water Development Report 2015, “The principle of equity, perhaps more than any technical recommendation, carries with it the promise of a more water-secure world for all”. Gender equality is considered a key factor to boost water management and access, and the inclusion of women in decision-making on water development and management at all levels is called for.

The central role of women in the provision, management and safeguarding of water and their participation as a stakeholder at all levels is already included in the Dublin Principles for Integrated Water Resources Management of 1992 (Dublin Principle 3 and 2 respectively). Women’s participation and involvement in water-related development efforts was also specifically called for in the International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005 – 2015, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly with the aim to propagate water cooperation at all levels, including transnational, between sectors, and with full inclusion of all stakeholders. Women’s civil society has risen to that challenge and accounts for many instances of meaningful involvement of women in water resources development and management leading to more effective and sustainable solutions to water problems and infrastructure development that yields maximum social and economic returns. On the whole, however, the emphasis of the Millennium Development Goals has been on technical service provision; and social equity and women’s inclusion as underlying principles for the sustainable use and management of water resources have not been addressed in a systematic way.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promises a trend reversal with due consideration for systemic barriers to sustainable development such as inequality and unsustainable behavior and practices. An all-of-society engagement and partnership is propagated as a main driver for transformation.  Cross-sectorial cooperation is envisaged to break down existing silos and multi-stakeholder groups are encouraged to jointly overcome conflicting interests between nations, cultures, resource uses, and population segments.

The 2030 Development Agenda re-emphasizes the centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment to make such a participatory and inclusive approach a reality on the ground. Goal # 5 - to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls - includes a commitment to facilitate women’s agency for the benefit of all other development goals. There is also a dedicated water goal SDG # 6 - ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all – reconfirming that water security is the foundation and the glue for achieving food and energy security, social stability, economic prosperity, disaster risk reduction, and peace; and that it plays an important role in empowering the poor and marginalized, the majority of whom are still women and girls.

Working on the gender and water interface has a high and as yet largely untapped potential to contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and to address the ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to leave no one behind.

GWP Gender Strategy: working on the SDG#5 –SDG#6 interface

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) was established in 1996 to contribute to water security as the foundation for sustainable development. Social equity and diversity and inclusion are core values of GWP and considered indispensable for sustainable water management. The Gender Strategy developed by Global Water Partnership as a supplement to its overall Strategy towards 2020 addresses the role of GWP in advancing gender sensitive and women-inclusive water governance and management at all levels.

Gender roles determine how women and men are affected by the way water resources are developed, used and managed. In countries and situations where there are distinct gender roles, it is particularly important to view water policies and programs through a gender lens. A well-known example of gender mainstreaming water policies is the AMCOW gender strategy in the development and implementation of which the GWP Regional Water Partnerships in Africa have played and are playing a substantial role.

At the same time, gender roles have a strong bearing on how and what women can contribute to achieving water security for all, both in their individual capacity and as a major group in society. Given that stakeholder participation is a core business of GWP and that women are considered an important stakeholder group, the GWP Gender Strategy specifically zooms in on women as contributors to water security.

There are various aspects to women’s inclusion in the water sector: gender parity amongst water professionals, equal participation of women in decision-making, but also the utilization of women’s social capital, that is enshrined in their diverse social networks, for strengthening community participation and for creating a strong civil society that can help realize distributed water governance on the ground.

Brazil presents a good example of how the GWP Gender Strategy has sparked gender and water integration in a country that has longstanding commitment to IWRM and to gender equality, with national policies and action plans in place for both. (BOX: The Brazilian example)

Situations are very different in the different parts of the world. Countries face specific socio-cultural realities of which gender is an intrinsic part; they are at distinct points on the development spectrum and they have different priorities, capacities and needs. The analysis of country-specific situations and an assessment of where working on the gender-water-development nexus may be expected to have true impact are therefore imperative to ensure effective gender and water programming that will lead to a tailor-made operationalization of the overall framework that the GWP Gender Strategy presents.

Operationalizing the GWP Gender Strategy

The Global Water Partnership has three strategic goals: 1) catalyzing change in policies and practice, 2) generating and communicating knowledge, and 3) strengthening partnerships.

In the GWP Theory of Change, a strong and inclusive multi-stakeholder network is considered the key asset for catalyzing changes in policy and practice. Country and Regional Water Partnerships offer neutral platforms for multi-stakeholder dialogue and facilitate cooperation. Talking to and learning from each other creates trust and understanding and helps different stakeholder groups such as government agencies, scientists, technical experts, business communities, NGOs, Women, Youth, Indigenous People, Farmers, and Community Based Organizations to find common grounds for action. The knowledge generated in our diverse network of partners is evidence-based and informs decision-makers and practitioners alike. It feeds bottom-up into the global fora where international frameworks for action are shaped and agreed.  

The same principles apply to the gender strategy: GWP works toward embedment of the gender dimension in international and national water policies, development plans and programs (Strategic Goal # 1), generates and disseminates knowledge and tools for gender and women inclusive policies and plans (Strategic Goal # 2), and creates strong multi-stakeholder partnerships in which women participate on an equal footing, both in their individual capacity and as Major Group in society (Strategic Goal # 3).

The 85 country water partnerships of GWP, in which different stakeholder groups work together as equal partners, play a key role in promoting the inclusion of women’s voice in national and local water dialogues. They can facilitate the involvement of women’s civil society in integrated planning processes, and in implementation and monitoring of resulting programs and projects. Social networks of women are generally built on trust and reciprocity, on shared ethical norms and mutual support; and they have built-in accountability and transparency mechanisms making them a valuable partner to develop local ownership and good water governance. GWP Pakistan presents an example of the added value and positive spin-off that the inclusion of an empowered women’s civil society can have. (BOX: The Pakistani example)

A key element for women-inclusiveness is the strengthening of women’s civil society so that they are equipped to participate on an equal footing. GWP has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the global Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) to cooperate on strengthening women’s civil society and enable their full participation in water governance at all levels. NetWwater, the Network of Women Water Professionals of Sri Lanka and founding member of both GWP Sri Lanka and the Women for Water Partnership, provides a good example of women leadership in gender sensitizing water policies and practice.  (BOX: The Sri Lankan example)

The Brazilian Example

The Water & Gender dialogues organized by National Water Agency (ANA), GWP Brazil, and the National Policy for Women of Brazil on the basis of the GWP Gender Strategy, resulted in the creation of the Commission pro ANA´s Gender Committee. The Gender Commission focuses both on internal issues (e.g., establishing a gender-sensitive culture within the Agency and including the gender issue in all its programs, projects and actions), as well as on external issues (e.g., promoting the recognition that Women play a central role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water). This ANA Gender Committee, when fully at work, will be linked to the Board of ANA. Following these initiatives, other gender committees related to Water Resources Secretariats have already been established, or are in this process, throughout Brazil. With this institutional mechanism in place, Brazil creates the enabling environment to systematically address gender in water in a decentralized way and with full inclusion of Women as stakeholder groups. The GWP Gender Strategy has been translated into Portuguese and made available to all Lusophone countries.

The Pakistani Example

In Pakistan, an urban water partnership, Karachi Water Partnership has effectively engaged women’s networks as stakeholders in decision-making processes. The main aim was to promote good governance with not just 50% involvement of women but also to empower them for a more efficient system. There were training and discussion workshops to raise awareness and capacity. These women networks have played an instrumental role in implementing water demand management initiatives and in discussions with government ministries on enhancing water laws, which now reflect more equitable resource sharing.

The Sri Lankan Example

NetWwater, the network of Women Water Professionals in Sri Lanka and founding member of the Sri Lanka Water Partnership, has ensured gender sensitive and women inclusive practice of GWP Sri Lanka from the start. Annual Gender & Water Dialogues at district level are an important activity of the Sri Lanka Water Partnership since 2004. The deliberate inclusion of women’s civil society voices has lead to gender sensitive and informed decision-making by national and local authorities and there are many instances of active community participation through women’s agency.

Women-to-women networking and exchange on water related development issues has resulted in many community-based and women-led projects that show a high degree of sustainability. For instance, in the drinking water sector, the bottom-up movement of women’s participation that was supported by the Sri Lanka Water Partnership improved management of their drinking water facilities, inclusion of sanitation including school sanitation needs, highlighting menstrual hygiene management and a spin –off of social and economic development initiatives.

Concluding thoughts

Gender is a complex and multi-faceted issue; and GWP is a diverse and multi-layered network that works on integrated approaches in water management, which is a complex matter in itself. The challenge is to make gender inclusion in water related work relevant and manageable. Assessing where working on the water-gender-development nexus is most useful in terms of impact on water security for all is an essential first step.

Gendered dynamics of water underscores the close inter-linkages between gender, poverty, sustainable development and peaceful societies. Bridging the gap between conceptual comprehension of gender issues and everyday grassroots realities of differential access to and use of water is the ultimate challenge and can only be realized by asking and involving the key stakeholder themselves; by capacitating them to articulate their issues and to participate in solving their problems. Serious pre-investment in the strengthening of local actors is vital and donor support should be directed to creating this enabling environment, supporting groups operating at the local level, that are willing to take the first steps and able to engage with grassroots communities; also to enable women’s civil society to engage with gender specialists and water technicians as equal collaborators in mainstreaming gender in all development efforts including in providing sustainable access to water for women and girls. Without this commitment we will not have the bottom-up processes that complement the top-down policy processes and the realization of our ambitions will once again fail.

The successful integration of gender in water-related development efforts relies on ownership, commitment, leadership and perseverance. It is a slow process of social transformation and mind-set change. A strong and multi-stakeholder partnership that initiates and fuels this process is indispensable. And it is imperative that women are an equal partner in this process and strengthened – where need be - to play their role as agents of change.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the GWP secretariat, in particular gender focal point Ankur Gupta, for the constructive contribution to this article. A special word of thanks goes to Ms Gisela Damm-Forattini of GWP Brazil and Ms Kusum Athukorala of GWP Sri Lanka for providing the example from their countries. Last but not least, my highest appreciation for all partners and individuals in the GWP family for their past and on-going efforts to making gender sensitive and women inclusive water management and governance a reality the ground.

Women as Agents of Change in Water: Reflections on Experiences from the Field

The publication is available in pdf here.

Women, Wash and the Water for Life Decade: an Emerging Framework for Success Post-2015

The publication is available in pdf here.